By T. J. Young
We tell ourselves stories to make sense of the world. To explain seemingly inexplicable phenomena. We have done so ever since we were cavemen looking up at the stars.
But sometimes the world is stubborn. It refuses to fit into a box. It presents us with random, disconnected facts that don’t fit together. And then we just flounder, lost in a universe of ambiguity and contradiction.
But I don’t think we can give up. We have to keep trying. We have to be committed to the existence of truth, to the existence of an objective reality. Don’t we? Otherwise, we are in la la land.
That’s why I’m writing this down. To help me find the truth, because the truth is essential, and it deserves to be told. Even if it’s weird, scary, and maybe not altogether rational.
I spent almost a month on the Station—Daedalus Station, in orbit around Jupiter. I went there to investigate the disappearance of Jonah Bryerson, the college-age son of Emmet Bryerson, the CEO of Landau Corporation, one of the largest corporations in the solar system. The corporation manufactured interplanetary shuttles and asteroid mining rigs, among many other things.
Jonah had disappeared almost a year before, vanishing after a late-night birthday party for his dad. He was last seen by his girlfriend, Amanda Jay. They left the party together and went back to Jonah’s quarters, where, according to Amanda, they said goodnight, Jonah went inside, and she went back to her own quarters to sleep. Jonah was never seen again.
Given Jonah’s family connection to Landau and his father’s status as an industry titan, the disappearance received a fair amount of news coverage on Earth. Station police investigated, but they found no evidence of foul play and no clues as to Jonah’s whereabouts. There was no blood or signs of struggle in his quarters, no ransom or suicide note—nothing. After a few months, the news coverage died away, and the police quietly closed their files. Their conclusion was that Jonah had hitched a ride off the Station and gone somewhere—possibly on some business venture of his own, or possibly just on a lark. It was the only explanation that made sense to them.
I became interested in the case because of a small detail I noticed in one of the news reports. The item mentioned that Jonah had, just before his disappearance, taken on a new role with Landau, overseeing its bioengineering research. Landau was primarily a construction company, but it also had a research division that employed a wide range of scientists and engineers studying everything from robotics to nanotechnology. According to the news article, the company had recently begun some experiments in bioengineering, and Jonah had been appointed as a liaison between the scientists doing that work and company management.
This link to bioengineering intrigued me because, on Earth at least, most genetic engineering was strictly banned. Experiments conducted in the early 2100s had gone very badly, resulting in deformed children, insanity, and in some cases grotesque human-animal hybrids called chimeras. I started to wonder whether, given Daedalus’s distance from Earth and its relatively isolated environment, the company might have engaged in prohibited practices. I wondered if Jonah had either done something illegal or found out that the company was doing something illegal. Could that have been what led to his disappearance? Had he run away to avoid prosecution? Or to protect company secrets?
I also had a personal interest in the case. I knew Jonah from my days as a sports reporter, when he ran track for Daedalus College. I covered his races when he competed on Earth and even did an in-depth profile of him one year when he was an all-system nominee. He struck me as a very dedicated, focused kid, serious about his life and devoted to his family, teammates, and friends. I found it hard to believe he would just up and disappear for no reason.
It wasn’t much—my suspicions and my personal interest—but I managed to convince the editor of one of the journals—Mara Dean of the Janus Report—to send me to Daedalus to investigate. If nothing else, I told her, I could write a travel piece about life on the Station, which made her laugh. Anyway, she did agree to back me, so I hitched a ride on a Landau interplanetary shuttle, and two months later, there I was.
My first impressions were not positive. The station was huge, complex, forbidding. Part spaceport, part bustling corporate headquarters, part crowded shopping mall, part haunted mansion. It was full of long corridors, dark corners, sudden blasts of air, and had a strange dampness to everything as a result of all the organics they had to grow to keep the place habitable. It was also very busy—no one ever seemed to sleep there except me.
My first step was to talk to his dad, old Emmet Bryerson. According to police reports, Emmet and his son didn’t get along apparently because, among other things, Emmet disapproved of his son’s girlfriend. At one point, the old man had actually accused her of being behind his disappearance, but the police ruled that possibility out because she had an alibi. Station monitors—which were everywhere—showed her going into her quarters that night at about midnight. She didn’t emerge until morning, nine hours later. My interest, however, was less in Emmet’s relationship with his son than it was in what exactly Jonah was doing for the company. What research was he overseeing? About that, the police reports were silent.
I found Emmet in his surprisingly modest office on the outer ring of the Station. He was sitting at his desk, looking out a small porthole in the wall at the vast expanse of Jupiter outside. The room was very spartan, containing nothing but the desk, a couple chairs, a piece of what I assumed was abstract art hanging on the wall, and a few damp, bedraggled plants. There was also a photo of Bryerson shaking hands with the President. In the photo, he looked younger than he did in person, with a confident eagerness in his pose that his older self lacked sitting before me. He was more corpulent now, with a broader, fleshier face, and he seemed somehow ill at ease. But he still had the same hard blue eyes and blunt features he had in the photo. Not a man to be trifled with, I thought.
He gave me a tight, condescending smile when I came in, as if he thought I was applying for a job. He lost the smile, however, when I started asking him questions about Jonah and his role with the company.
“Jonah had no official role with Landau,” he said flatly, cutting me off, “before he left, I mean. Certainly not over research. He wasn’t qualified for that. Of course, unofficially, we talked about Landau’s work all the time—our vision for the future, for example. Where we see humanity going in the coming decades—that sort of thing. Dinner table talk. I wasn’t trying to prep Jonah to take over the company. I don’t want that for him. He needs to make his own way. If someone told you he had a role in research, either as liaison or overseer or anything else, they’re wrong.”
This was a bit surprising to hear, given what I’d read, but I let it pass.
“Landau is conducting research into genetic engineering, isn’t it?” I said.
He nodded, becoming more animated. “Yes, indeed, we are. I can’t discuss the details of course—they’re proprietary—but we conduct research into all kinds of biotechnology, among other things. Mankind has to grow, you know. Evolve, so that we can meet the challenges of the future. We can’t afford to stay static. Just look at what’s already happened on Earth—riots, overcrowding, food shortages, pollution. If we want to thrive as a species, we need to expand, find new worlds, develop new ways of living, alter the very chemistry of our bodies—and construction in space is not easy, Mr. . . ah . . . um, I’m sorry. . . He looked at me expectantly.
“Hendricks.”
“Mr. Hendricks. Yes, of course. If you don’t know, our mission at Landau is to create the future. To open up new worlds and new environments to human development.”
He opened a drawer, took out a flyer, and handed it to me.
“We envision building colonies on worlds that have until now been thought uninhabitable. Like Titan and Europa. We want to harvest the resources of those planets for the betterment of mankind. But doing that will require both technological and biological advances. In materials, energy production, genetics, agriculture, logistics—just about all aspects of human life. But I can assure you we are fully permitted, fully authorized in everything we do. All of it is well known to authorities on Earth. Go ask them if you don’t believe me.”
He spoke quickly, confidently, but it sounded too pat to me. Like a shareholder speech. I decided to take a different tack.
“I’ve read reports that you didn’t get along with your son, is that true?”
He made a dismissive gesture with his hand. “No, it’s not. Not at all. Of course, we didn’t always agree. We argued sometimes. Like all fathers and sons do. Jonah thought we should be doing more with environmental research, for example, but those arguments were trivial. Deep down, Jonah and I are really very much alike. We both feel we’re on the verge of something here —on the frontier of a new era for mankind. It’s exciting, but it’s also stressful—and sure, sometimes that stress boiled over. But if you’re implying that I had something to do with his disappearance, you’re grossly mistaken. I loved—still love—my son.”
He paused, looking at me with a slightly challenging air, as if he wanted me to disagree so he could cut me down.
“I understand,” I said, avoiding his eyes. “But I thought you disapproved of his lifestyle—of his girlfriend in particular.”
“Amanda?” He shrugged. “I don’t think much of her, no.”
“Why not?” I was trying to get under his skin, to get past the corporate boosterism. I thought the girl might be a weak spot.
He leaned forward slightly, planting his elbows on the desk, like he was going to give me a lecture. His face became hard, his eyes narrow.
“I’m a proud man, Hendricks. I’ve worked hard to get where I am, and I want nothing but the best for my son. I don’t want him wasting his time with cheap girls like Amanda. I won’t mince my words. She’s a user. A bloodsucker. She latched onto Jonah and tried to milk him for all he was worth.”
“Oh?”
“You may not know the type, Hendricks,” he said, “you’re just a reporter. You’re not rich like me. You haven’t had to deal with all the so-called friends and relatives that come out of the woodwork when you’ve got money. But believe me, being rich attracts all sorts of unsavory characters. People you can’t trust. And that’s Amanda. A gold digger, they used to be called.”
Knowing Jonah, I thought that unlikely, but I didn’t show it. “Have you told Jonah that?” I asked.
“Yes, I have—many times—but he doesn’t seem to care. He can’t see it. Or doesn’t want to see it. I don’t know. Maybe deep down he knows, but it doesn’t matter to him.”
I started to ask him why, but he cut me off again, launching into another speech that sounded like something he had prepared ahead of time.
“You see, Hendricks,” he said, leaning back, “I had to earn my money. I know what it’s like to struggle. When I first came here, this place was nothing more than a steel ring floating in space. I slept in my EV suit most of the time. Damn near died half a dozen times. Worked my butt off building this place—bit by bit, bulkhead by bulkhead. Now look at it. It’s a major transportation hub with state-of-the-art science labs, luxury living quarters, and cargo holds full of just about every product you can imagine. Hell, it’s even a tourist destination. And I made it what it is!”
He paused, as if expecting me to congratulate him, then continued. “But Jonah—much as I love him—was born with a silver spoon in his mouth. He’s had it easy his whole life. Never had to get his hands dirty. As a result, he doesn’t care about money. Maybe he figures, if Amanda wants it, why not let her have it? He was probably getting a good return for it at least—if you know what I mean.”
He gave me a look, but I ignored it. “Do you know where your son is now, Mr. Bryerson?”
He shook his head. “I don’t have a clue. Earth? Mars? I haven’t heard from him at all. I want him back, though.”
“Why do you think he left?”
He dropped his hands flat on the desk and turned his head to look out the porthole again.
“I think he must have been bored,” he said after a moment. “He must have wanted an adventure. I don’t know what else it could be. I don’t know why he left without telling anyone— maybe that was just part of the adventure—part of the game. In recent months, he was restless, uneasy—I could see that—but I thought he would get over it. I thought he was just growing up. He’s over twenty-one now, you know. I guess I was wrong.”
He looked hopeful and a little pathetic, but I couldn’t help wondering if it was part of his act. Part of his corporate facade. There was a hint of coldness in his eyes that was unsettling. Shouldn’t he have been angrier? Sadder? More desperate? Tearing his hair out? It had been a year since Jonah disappeared, but still.
“Have you tried to find him?”
“Of course. I’ve put some of my best people on it. But there’s no trace! Nothing. God knows how he got off the Station. There’s nothing in the logs. He must be hiding somewhere. I don’t know.”
He rubbed his face. “There will be hell pay when he gets back, I’ll tell you that.”
“What happened the night he left?”
“Oh, I’ve been over all that with the police. You can read the reports. There was nothing remarkable about it—just a quiet birthday celebration with family and a few friends. He got into an argument with Lester, but I don’t think it was anything serious. Certainly not anything to make him run away.”
“Lester—that’s his best friend, right? Is he another bloodsucker in your view?”
Bryerson’s expression clouded over. “Look, Hendricks, I’ve tried to be candid with you, but I’ve got no obligation to tell you anything. This interview is a courtesy.”
“I know. I’m sorry, I was just wondering.”
“Lester is a fine young man—a little scattered, maybe, but no, not a bloodsucker.”
“Okay.”
There was a moment of silence, then a thought seemed to cross his mind.
“I have to say, though—I think Lester might know more about where Jonah is hiding than he’s telling.”
“How so?”
“Well, it’s nothing specific, but recently I’ve seen Lester arguing with Amanda. More than once. I don’t know what they’re arguing about, but I’ve gotten the impression that Lester knows something and Amanda’s trying to get him to tell her what it is. I know he doesn’t like her. He has pretty much the same view of her as I do. I don’t know. It’s just strange—seeing the two of them together. It’s made me wonder.”
“Are you having them watched?”
He shifted a little in his chair. “No, of course not. What makes you say that? It’s just something I’m aware of. People tell me things, Hendricks, whether I like it or not.”
I nodded, but I wasn’t convinced.
He leaned forward. “Besides, what if I was watching them? I want my son back. If they know something, I deserve to know it too. Don’t you think?”
I couldn’t argue with him there. I stood up.
“Thanks for speaking with me, Mr. Bryerson,” I said, turning to go.
He gave me brief look. “You will keep me informed, won’t you? If you find anything?”
“Of course.”
On my way out, I saw him lean over his desk, saying something into what I assumed was a microphone, then I was out the door and gone.
***
Thinking it over that night, I wondered what Bryerson really had against Amanda. Did he really think she was after Jonah’s money? Or was he just jealous of the attention she got from his son? And why was he having her watched? Was there more going on between Lester and Amanda than what he had told me? Maybe I was just being paranoid, but I didn’t feel like I could trust Bryerson. Corporate moguls were, in my experience, inveterate liars. His vision of the future, for example, which he pitched as for the benefit of everyone, was really about enriching himself. On the other hand, this was personal—a family matter. I was not a regulator, or a politician, or an investor. He had nothing to gain by lying to me, and he seemed genuinely concerned about his son. His voice had the ring of truth to it when he said he wanted the boy back. Maybe this was nothing more than what the cops thought—a wayward son who needed some space from an overbearing father.
The next day, I managed to track down Amanda Jay. She was working as a lab assistant for a biology professor, on her way to some sort of advanced degree. I caught her as she was tending a vat of evil-looking algae in one of the Station’s laboratories. She was tall, dark-haired, and had a way of talking out of the side of her mouth that made everything she said seem ironic. She was wearing a white lab coat and looked more like a doctor than a biology student.
After introductions, I got right to the point.
“Why did Jonah run away?” I asked. “What’s your theory?”
She frowned. “Theory? Jonah wasn’t a science experiment.”
“You know what I mean.”
She gave me a scrutinizing look. “Have you talked to his father?”
“Yes.”
“Then you should know.”
“Know what, exactly?”
She tossed her head. “What a jerk he is.”
“You think Jonah left to get away from his father?”
“Well, why else?” She seemed incredulous that I would think otherwise.
“Did he ever say anything to you about leaving?”
“Oh god—all the time! He hated his father.”
“Why?”
“Don’t all rich, spoiled sons hate their fathers?”
“I don’t know, do they?”
She gave me a sardonic look, then turned away, pouring some chemicals into the algae tank.
“Look, Ms. Jay, I’m just trying to find out what happened.”
She sighed, then, in an exasperated tone, said, “His father was always talking about how he had to work for a living, how he suffered so many hardships, how he didn’t know where his next meal was coming from, how he saved every dime, worked every night, climbed the ladder of success one painful step at a time, calluses on his fingers, blood on his shirt, and so on and so on. About how Jonah was nothing but a wastrel and useless, and not bright enough, and couldn’t do anything, and wasted his time and all the money the old man spent on him and—oh, you know the mantra. He was always so full of himself and so disrespectful of Jonah—it made me sick.”
“You mean Bryerson resented his son’s freedom?”
“Oh, it was more than just that. He resented everything about Jonah—his youth, his freedom, his friends—me especially. The old man’s wife died years ago, you know.”
“Did Jonah resent him too?”
“Jonah?” She suddenly looked troubled, and her brow furrowed. Her voice changed, becoming softer. “He did something to Jonah. I don’t know what happened, but he did something. Jonah used to be so nice, such a dreamer. We used to lie under one of the viewing portals and look out at Jupiter or Io or Ganymede—sometimes we could even see Earth, way off in the blackness, just a blue speck—and we’d talk about everything. About going somewhere, exploring the galaxy, going back to Earth, seeing the oceans and the mountains, or going to Titan maybe, where the company was working on something. He was so full of excitement, of energy, he’d tell me all kinds of things. . .” She drifted off for a moment, her face wistful.
“But then something changed—something happened, and Jonah became sullen, resentful. He was snapping all the time, bitter and angry. Sometimes he was violent. He would smash things—chairs, glasses, anything he might have in his hands. It was frightening. I couldn’t even talk to him when he was like that.”
Tears welled up in her eyes, and she turned away again.
“What brought about the change?”
She shrugged, her back to me.
“I don’t know. He wouldn’t tell me. Whenever I asked him what was wrong, he would blow up. Yelling about his father and the company and how they had tricked him and were sidelining him and wouldn’t tell him anything. After a while, I thought it was better to just not even bring it up.”
“Was he ever angry at you?”
“Yeah, sometimes.”
“Did he accuse you of sponging off him?”
She whirled around, wiping her eyes with quick, jabbing motions of her hands. “Did the old man tell you that? Try to convince you I’m some kind of bloodsucker? He probably actually said ‘gold digger’ didn’t he? What a prejudiced, entitled, hypocritical old bastard.”
Her face flushed.
“But no. It’s a crock of you know what. If anything, it was the other way around. Jonah sponged off of me. That’s right. Jonah was always broke. His old man didn’t give him a dime, and Jonah spent whatever money he earned as soon as he got it. Not that I had much either. But when we went out anywhere, it was always ‘oh, by the way, Amanda, do you mind covering this one?’ I got sick of it, I can tell you that, especially when he started getting violent.”
She shook her head. “Me? A gold digger? What a joke. I’d laugh if it didn’t burn me up so much.”
“Why do you think he calls you that?”
“How should I know? Because he’s a creep? Because he hates me? Because I love Jonah, and he doesn’t? Because he’s jealous? Do you know he used to have us watched? His goons would follow us around—supposedly as protection, but it was actually just surveillance in my opinion. He has eyes everywhere. Monitors, cameras, spies, you name it. He even forced Jonah to have checkups all the time—like every month—regardless of whether he needed them. Can you believe that?”
My ears perked up. “What do you mean, checkups?”
“Physical exams. With his doctor, Dr. Barrow. God knows why. It was ridiculous. Jonah was always perfectly fine. It was just part of the old man’s interference. His manipulation, his ‘fatherly concern,’ as he calls it. The man’s a control freak, I’m telling you. He was constantly telling Jonah what to do, where to go, who to see, what to study. Nothing Jonah did escaped his attention. I tried to help Jonah, to protect him—to stand between him and his dad a little—but there was only so much I could do, you know?”
She spoke bitterly, angrily—perhaps with justification, but I also had the sense she was exaggerating—that it wasn’t just the old man who was jealous and controlling. Maybe it wasn’t all roses between her and Jonah either. Could that be why he left?
“Do you know where Jonah is now?”
She rolled her eyes as if I were an idiot. “No, of course not.”
“Did he tell you where he was going? Or why?”
“No.”
“Have you been seeing Lester Muldoon?”
She gave me a sharp, angry look. “Yeah, I see him sometimes, so what?”
“Does Lester know where Jonah is?”
“Lester? Hell no. But what do I know? Ask him yourself.”
“Are you and Lester friends?”
“Maybe. Why are you asking me about Lester?”
“Bryerson thinks Lester may know where Jonah is.”
“Yeah right,” she scoffed, “that’s just another one of his fantasies—one of his weird conspiracy theories. He thinks everyone’s got secrets because he’s so full of them himself.”
“He says you and Lester have been arguing.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Is he watching me?”
“I think he might be.”
“That bastard! Son-of-a-bitch! I swear, one of these days I am going to . ..” She didn’t finish, glaring off into the distance.
I waited a few seconds, then asked: “What have the two of you been arguing about?”
She took a deep breath, trying to calm herself.
“Lester takes drugs, okay? Lots of drugs. He and Jonah both. I tried to get Jonah away from him, but he wouldn’t listen. Old friends, right? I’m just trying to help them, for god’s sake! Now Lester’s gotten in debt with that freak Yugin, and he wants me to bail him out. As if I could! I don’t have that kind of money! I told him to get lost, but he keeps pestering me, keeps telling me if I help him he’ll tell me something about Jonah—like where he went, or what he’s up to, or some other crap—but it’s all bullshit. He doesn’t know anything. He just wants money to keep the monkey off his back.”
Drugs, I thought, of course. Rich kids, little supervision, overbearing dad—it was starting to add up, but not the way I had thought.
“Was Jonah in debt to this guy Yugin?”
“Not that I know of. Jonah is smarter than that—smarter than Lester anyway.” She paused. “Oh, you think maybe Jonah is running away from Yugin?”
She laughed a short, barking laugh. “Not a chance. If Yugin had anything on Jonah, old man Bryerson would squash him like a bug. Wouldn’t even give it a second thought. And Yugin no doubt knows that. So forget it. No, it’s just Lester being his usual weaselly, useless, self.”
Maybe, I thought. Maybe not.
“Thank you, Ms. Jay,” I said, feeling like I had heard enough, “I appreciate your time.”
She nodded curtly and turned back to her algae while I made my way out the door and back down the corridor toward my room.
She was, obviously, angry and bitter. She’d been abandoned, left behind. He hadn’t even told her where he was going, and she was apparently being watched as well as pestered for money by Jonah’s best friend. I couldn’t blame her for being angry, but I also thought she was hiding something about Jonah’s drug use. When I profiled Jonah a few years ago, he seemed clean—an all-American kid—but if his best friend was as heavy a user as Amanda said, it seemed unlikely that Jonah wasn’t as well. Despite her denials, I wondered if Jonah was also in debt to Yugin.
I decided I would try to find Yugin.
***
It took me a couple days—rather unpleasant days, I have to say—but I did eventually track Yugin down. Even though Daedalus Station was a controlled, hermetic, environment, it still boasted a complement of seedy bars and nightclubs—the kind of grimy, dimly lit places one finds wherever humans congregate. Yugin, it turned out, held court in the backroom of a place called the Dirty Martini.
I found him shooting pool by himself in a small, drab little room very similar to Bryerson’s office. He was a big, square guy with neat black hair, a clean-shaven face, and the easy, confident manner of someone firmly on his own turf. He hardly looked up when I came in.
“They always end up here, don’t they?” he said, lining up a shot. He spoke to no one in particular, although the room was probably monitored by his bodyguards. “When they want the real story—when they get tired of the lies.”
I raised an eyebrow. “You know who I am?”
He slammed a ball into a corner pocket, harder than he needed to, then straightened up, looking slightly amused. “Course I do. It’s my business to know things, Hendricks.” He seemed to relish saying my name, even though I had given his underlings a different one. “You’re the guy looking into the disappearance of the golden boy, Jonah Bryerson.”
I nodded.
“And somebody told you about me, didn’t they?”
I looked at him, wondering how much he knew of my activities. Probably not as much as he was pretending.
“Maybe,” I said. “I heard he occasionally did business with you. Him and Lester Muldoon.”
He smiled. “Yeah, that’s right. I sold them some stuff.”
“How much stuff?”
Yugin’s smile hardened into a frown. “What’s it to you? Why should I talk to you?”
He walked partway around the table and began lining up another shot, half ignoring me, pumping the cue back and forth.
I tried to act nonchalant. “Because you’re a businessman, Yugin. And you’re smart. And smart guys care about the truth. That’s all I’m after—the truth.”
“Yeah right,” he said, squinting. He took another shot, this time popping the six ball in the side pocket. He was trying to project indifference, but I sensed some tension in the way he was slamming the balls around.
“I’m serious, Yugin. This is your big chance. If I find out where Jonah is, you can chase him down and get paid the money you’re owed. Quid pro quo.”
He snorted derisively. “Bullshit. Nobody knows where he is.”
“I disagree. Somebody knows. A guy like that can’t just disappear. He’s too well known. Too rich. Somebody will talk eventually, and then it will all come out. You can either gain from that—or lose. Your choice.”
He paused, pretending to chalk his cue, his dark eyes locked on mine. The little room throbbed with music from the bar.
“Jonah does owe you money, doesn’t he?” I said, casually.
He continued gazing at me, sizing me up, a little half-smile hovering at the edges of his mouth. Then, he seemed to come to a decision. He set his cue down and leaned on the table, his big hands spread wide.
“Yeah, all right, newsman, what the hell—like you say, I’m a businessman, I’ll talk. But don’t make me regret it, or it’ll be me finding you, okay?”
“Sure.”
His voice lowered slightly. “That bastard owes me six thousand bucks, okay? Him and Lester both were into it big time. I could hardly get the stuff fast enough. Jonah especially. He was in here practically every day, begging me. It was pathetic, but lucrative—you know what I mean? The guy had nerve. Sometimes it was him busting my balls—not the other way around. I mean, he could be dangerous. Smashed up the place more than once. I had to walk around with an escort—for my own safety, for protection. The guy was a maniac. I mean, yeah, he owes me money, and I’d like to find him, but I’m not exactly sorry to see him gone, you know?”
I raised an eyebrow.
He reached under the table where there was, apparently, a hidden compartment, and took out a small metal box. He tossed it to me. “That’s what he was doing—one of those a week.” He shook his head in disbelief. “You do one of those a week, and you’re not going to know your own reflection after awhile.”
I looked inside the box. It held a pair of small syringes containing a pale-yellow liquid. I didn’t recognize it, although that didn’t necessarily mean anything.
“What is it?” I asked.
Yugin grinned slyly. “You’ll have to find that out for yourself, newsman. I’m not going to tell you everything. Let’s just say it’s not your average brew. Had to be made special. Very expensive.”
I thought it was weird he wouldn’t tell me what it was, but he was probably just being an asshole. I closed the box and tossed it back to him.
“So what made Jonah change? Get angry?”
“Beats me. I’m no shrink. He talked a lot about his dad. Seemed to think his dad had done something to him. Cheated him. Lied to him. Seemed to think that the company, Landau, was hiding something from him. Some secret. He was also pissed at his girlfriend, Miss Botany. They had it out more than a few times from what I hear. She was always trying to boss him around. But hell, I don’t really know. None of my business, you know.”
“What sort of secret is Landau hiding?”
His eyes suddenly narrowed. “You think I know that?”
“I think you can make a good guess. Secrets are your stock in trade, aren’t they?”
He didn’t answer right away, looking down at the table. The room pulsed with the music. “It’s a touchy subject,” he said finally, picking up his cue and twisting it in his hands, “very touchy. I gotta be careful here.”
I pulled some cash out of my pocket and set it on the table. “Tell me.”
He picked up the cash, counted it, then shoved it in his pocket. He still looked uneasy and unsatisfied, but he went on talking anyway.
“Landau’s got their fingers in everything,” he said, his mouth curled down as if he were eating something distasteful, “they’re a monster. Robotics, terraforming, shuttles, nuclear power, you name it. Including bioengineering. Cloning.”
“So Bryerson told me. Building the future, he called it.”
“Yeah, he loves to say that. I don’t know how much Jonah knew, but the word around the Station is that Landau’s been pushing the boundaries. Taking risks. Experimenting with people. Trying to breed the workforce of the future, supposedly. And they’ve had some accidents. Failures, mistakes. People have seen some strange things coming out of those labs.”
“Like what, exactly?”
“Details are hard to come by. It’s all very private, very secret. Place is locked down pretty tight. I only know about it because some of their science guys come here for a little R&R, you know? And then they talk too much. But there have been body bags, I’m told. Experiments gone wrong. Stuff sent out the airlocks.”
“You think Jonah found out about it? Is that why he left?”
He looked doubtful. “Jonah’s a kid, okay? So how much does he know versus how much do he and his friends assume, or make up? I don’t know. I think Jonah suspected something was going on—he basically said as much—but I doubt he knew any details. That’s what he seemed to be complaining about all the time. That they wouldn’t tell him what was going on. The old man is smart. If there is anything illegal going on there, I’m sure he keeps a very close lid on it. And he knows his son is a little wild, so. . .” He gave a little flip of his hand, inviting me to fill in the blank.
“Is it possible the old man is responsible for Jonah’s disappearance?”
“Shit, anything’s possible with those guys but. . . I don’t know, I doubt it. The old man’s a ruthless bastard, but that’s going pretty far, don’t you think? Even for him. The old man dotes on his son, everyone knows that. Spoiled him rotten. He hasn’t been the same since the kid left.” He smiled slightly.
“Been good for business, actually.”
“Oh? How’s that?”
Yugin shook his head and made a little motion with his hand. “Figure it out for yourself, newsman,” he said, “time’s up, I’m afraid.” He picked up his cue and began lining up another shot.
I was about to protest when the door opened, and two very burly men came in carrying what looked like tasers.
I held up my hands. “Okay, okay, I’m going.” The two men moved apart, and I left, trying not to walk too quickly. As I exited through the bar, I thought I heard Yugin say something like “We’re gonna need . . .”, but the rest was lost in the noise and music of the bar.
***
If anything, my interview with Yugin left me more, not less, confused. He confirmed my initial instinct that Landau was engaged in illegal bioengineering, but he seemed to think it was unrelated to Jonah’s disappearance. He also confirmed my other instinct that Jonah was more heavily into drugs than Amanda was willing to admit. The drug connection, and associated debt, as well as his general dissatisfaction with his father seemed the most likely explanation for his leaving, rather than vague allegations of illegal cloning of which I had no proof.
I still had one more person to talk to—Lester Muldoon—but I was starting to feel discouraged. The facts just weren’t lining up like I had hoped. I was beginning to regret going to the Station at all. Not only did I not have a story, but more than that, the place just didn’t agree with me. It had an insular, unhealthy feel, like a hothouse left untended too long. The closed environment made me nervous, and I got the sense that I was constantly being watched. I wanted to breathe the free, clean air of Earth again.
But luckily—or unluckily—I ended up not having a choice about talking to Lester. He came to me.
It was late at night, and I was in my tiny cabin rereading the police reports, looking for clues I might have missed when someone knocked on the door. I opened the view screen to see who it was. The guy standing there looked bedraggled and scared. His eyes were huge, and he was shuffling his feet like he was nervous. Lester, I thought, almost immediately. Who else? I sighed and buzzed him in.
He started talking before the door was even shut behind him.
“You’re Hendricks, right? The reporter? I gotta talk to you. About Jonah. That’s what you’re investigating, isn’t it? His disappearance? There’s stuff you need to know.”
“Sure,” I said, a bit wearily, “just calm down and take your time.”
He glanced about fearfully, as if he expected someone to be hiding in one of the corners.
“You know Jonah was upset with his dad, right? With Landau? I think I know why.”
“Okay.”
He took a deep breath. “Jonah isn’t really human!”
“What?” I stared at him. His pupils were enlarged, and his hands were twisting and turning at his sides. His whole body was quivering. Was he on drugs? I opened my mouth to ask, but he jumped in ahead of me, the words rushing out of him like a dam had broken.
“I . . . I’ve thought, suspected, there was something wrong for a long time. Jonah isn’t an ordinary person. He’s way too smart, for one thing. And the way that his dad looks at him, assessing him, analyzing him—like he’s something he bought at the store—not like he’s his son, not really. It’s creepy. I know Jonah suspected something too. He kept pestering his dad, asking him questions, trying to talk to the scientists, trying to get into the labs, but the old man always resisted. Denied him. Wouldn’t tell him anything. Kept him away. And . . . over time . . . Jonah got angry . . . really angry. Started breaking things, acting reckless, taking tons of drugs— way too many drugs . . . .”
He paused, a little breathless.
“What are you saying, Lester?”
His face screwed up in pain. “Jonah was manufactured. Created in the lab. Like a clone.”
There was a moment of silence. He swallowed several times rapidly.
“Are you on drugs, Lester? Something you got from Yugin?”
He looked startled. “Me? No, uh-oh, no. I don’t do that stuff. I bought stuff for Jonah, that’s all. I don’t do it myself —makes me crazy.”
Given his fidgety manner and unkempt appearance, I thought he was probably lying, but I let it pass. I wanted to hear his story.
“Well, okay,” I said. “Go on.”
“I . . . thought that Jonah’s problems had something to do with Landau. I mean, what else? Landau’s behind everything around here.”
He looked sideways a moment, edging closer to where I sat on the edge of the bed.
“So, a while back, I snuck into one of the labs. A guy I know lifted one of the scientist’s ID tags, and I used it to get in. After hours—on the sly. I was scared, but I needed to know what was happening. And honestly, the place didn’t look like much at first—just an ordinary lab. Tables, beakers, sinks, fridges full of chemicals, that kind of stuff. But there was something else in there too.”
He hesitated, a frightened look in his eyes, his hands fidgeting.
“It was really weird—some sort of construct, I think, like a synthetic brain. Living tissue, but without a body. It was in a special room, refrigerated, in a glass case with lots of tubes and wires and other stuff going into it. It was connected to a console, like a computer terminal, and man, there was tons of data in there. I was able to access some of it using the scientist’s ID. According to the data, Jonah was created— manufactured by Landau as some sort of experiment. He was created from a combination of various DNA profiles, apparently with the idea that he would be stronger and smarter than anyone else—better adapted to living in space. The synthetic brain was like a repository—full of memories and ideas and data that could be downloaded into a cloned body. Apparently, Jonah’s not the only one like him either. According to the database there were dozens of other. . . experiments created over the last several years, each of them a little different, with different DNA and memories and thought patterns. I’m telling you, man, it gave me the creeps to see all that.”
He wiped his face. His voice became eager, excited. “I thought it was crazy at first—impossible. Some megalomaniac fantasy of the old man’s. But then I started to see how it all fit together. How different things fell into place. It explains so much about Jonah—the gaps in his memory, his mood swings, the anger, his sense of betrayal and frustration, his crazy ideas—they were like puzzle pieces that only came together once I knew how he had been created. I felt like I was seeing him for the first time.”
He fell silent, looking intently at me as if trying to make me believe him by sheer force of will. In reality, I only felt angry, confused, and a little sad. Either Lester was hopped up on drugs and hallucinating—in which case his ‘information’ was useless—or there was a kernel of truth in what he was saying, which turned the whole affair into a sad but all too familiar story about a science experiment gone wrong. It meant that Jonah had probably gone mad and left without even knowing what he was doing. An awful fate, but neither unexpected nor unprecedented. Other scientists before Bryerson had gone down similar roads.
“So,” I said, to close the loop, “Jonah left because he went nuts? Because he found out what he was and couldn’t live with it? Or what?”
“No, no, he didn’t go nuts—nothing like that. He was just trying to get away from his dad. He was frustrated, angry, impulsive. He kept talking about seeing the stars, going back to Earth, living his own life. His dad couldn’t stand that. You see, because Jonah was an experiment, the old man wanted to keep him around to keep an eye on him. To test him, watch him, document his development and all that. But Jonah wouldn’t stand for it. Got restless and anxious. So he took off. And good for him, I say. I was glad he left—that he made it out of here.”
“Did he tell you he was going?”
Lester’s brow wrinkled, and he seemed slightly taken aback.
“Well, no,” he said, “of course not. He had to keep it a secret, even from me. Otherwise his dad would have known.” He looked nervously around the room again, fidgeting, “Landau’s got cameras everywhere. They know everything around here.”
“So, you’re just speculating as to why he left.“
“No, no—aren’t you listening? I told you, Jonah left to escape his father! To live his life. To escape the prison his father wanted to put him into. Don’t you get it? If he’d stayed, he never would have been free. His dad would have controlled every aspect of his life. I mean, you could already see it happening while he was here. His dad hovering over him, his goons following him around; for all I know, they implanted some sort of tracking device in him—they always seemed to know where we were, what we were doing. It was oppressive, awful.”
“But they aren’t tracking him now, are they?”
His face lit up with that manic excitement again. “No, they’re not. That’s what’s so cool! Jonah must have figured it out. He must have found a way to avoid the cameras. To slip out unseen. Like a ghost. He’s out there somewhere right now, laughing his head off, thumbing his nose at his dad, and Landau, and the whole ugly business. Free somewhere in the system— maybe even back on Earth already, and nobody knows it. That’s the story you’ve got to write!”
“But there’s no proof, Lester. Nobody can verify what you’re saying.”
A slow smile spread across his face. He reached in his pocket and pulled out a data cube, handing it to me. He had an absurdly triumphant look on his face, as if he had just won the lottery.
“It’s all right there,” he said. “Before I left the lab, I downloaded most of the memory core from the synthetic brain. I couldn’t get all of it because there was so much, but I think I got enough. It’ll confirm what I’m saying.”
Surprised, I took the cube, turning it over in my hands. I hadn’t expected such foresight from him. Maybe he wasn’t as loony as I suspected. “Thanks,” I said, a trifle lamely.
Suddenly nervous again, he leaned close to my ear and whispered something to me. I could barely catch it, but it sounded like “Be careful.” Then he abruptly turned around and darted out of the room, leaving behind him a faint, cloying scent that I suspected was marijuana.
***
I spent the rest of that night reviewing the information on the cube. Lester was certainly right about one thing—there was a massive amount of data on there. As I read, I wondered about the veracity of it, about its authenticity, but it bore all the hallmarks of reality. It was so full of details— names, dates, codes, scientific terms, and reams of numbers. It didn’t seem likely that Lester and/or Jonah could have made it all up.
Based on the data in the cube, it was clear that Landau, as I had suspected from the beginning, was engaged in illegal bioengineering. I didn’t see anything that verified the existence of the synthetic brain Lester claimed he saw, but there were numerous reports describing what the scientists euphemistically referred to as ‘potentials’. These were, in a nutshell, humans grown from embryos and implanted with various genetic profiles, just as Lester had indicated. Some of the reports were gruesome —a catalog of deformities, short-lived chimeras, and unexpected mutations. These were described as ‘abandoned,’ which I took to be a reference to the body bags that Yugin had mentioned.
The cube also verified, as Lester had said, that Jonah himself was one of their experiments. He was referred to in the reports as J-11, which seemed to mean he was the eleventh version of Jonah they had produced. Their intent was, as far as I could tell, to develop a human capable of surviving in various hostile environments—stronger, smarter, with a more robust immune system—and with organs designed to handle and process toxins such as methane, sulfur, and carbon monoxide. He was, in that respect, a kind of human chameleon, able to essentially reprogram his respiratory and cardiovascular systems depending on the environment he was in.
I had to marvel at the skill of the scientists involved, but I was also appalled at their casual attitude toward mistakes. How many ‘potentials’ were ‘abandoned?’ Were they killed? What kind of life did they live before that? Who decided when they should be rejected? How could anyone stomach playing god in that way?
But there was something even more chilling hidden in the reports. Something that I didn’t realize at first, but that gradually became clear as I read through the material. Hints scattered in the documents slowly coalesced into a pattern—a pattern that, as I thought about it, told me everything I needed to know about where Jonah was. Assuming the data in the cube wasn’t fabricated, there was no real mystery about it. In the small hours of the morning, when I finally set the cube aside, I knew what I had to do, though I didn’t relish it.
***
I waited a day before going back to see the old man. I wanted to review the material again, to make sure I hadn’t missed anything, and I wanted to give my guts time to settle. I also needed to think about how I was going to present my findings to him. I had to be careful. One thing everyone I had talked to had been consistent about was that Bryerson had extensive resources at his command. Resources that it was unwise to cross. I needed to flush him out—to convince him that I knew what had happened—without revealing exactly how I knew.
When the time finally came, I made my way slowly back to his office, my stomach clenched, the damp gray walls of the Station seeming to watch me as I went.
I found him in almost the exact same position he had been in the first time. Seated behind his desk, staring out the porthole. Weird, multi-colored lights—reflections from Jupiter—flashed across his face. I took a seat opposite him.
When he turned from the window and looked at me, I felt anger boil up inside me, but it was tempered with a certain amount of compassion. He had been forced to make some hard decisions, and I could tell he felt them keenly. At the same time, it was his greed and recklessness that put him in the position of having to make those decisions in the first place, so it was hard to feel too much sympathy for him. Anger and a desire to expose him were foremost in my mind.
He wore the same bland, corporate face I had seen before, with the same hard look in his eyes.
“Mr. Hendricks,” he said, “you have completed your work, I take it?”
I nodded.
He leaned forward.
“Have you found Jonah?”
His manner was eager, expectant, but his voice was flat and unemotional.
Yes,” I said. “Yes and no.”
He frowned. “Is that a joke?”
“You know where Jonah is, Mr. Bryerson.”
He stared at me for several seconds, his mouth gradually settling into a cold frown, his hands flat on the desktop. He said nothing.
“Lester basically told me, although he wouldn’t admit it. Couldn’t see it. He’d constructed a narrative for himself in which Jonah escaped, and he wanted to believe that so much he ignored what he must have realized was the truth.” I paused, waiting, but Bryerson still didn’t speak.
“Jonah is dead.”
The words hung in the air, but he hardly reacted to them. He sat still as a statue, his face grim. I had to admire his sangfroid. He didn’t bat an eyelash, but I thought I could see his shoulders slump just a tiny bit, and his hands tighten a little, like he was angry.
“And you killed him,” I added.
That got his attention. He looked at me sharply, his posture suddenly erect, his head held high. He slowly pulled his hands back into his lap and sat rigidly straight in his chair, his eyes locked on mine. His gaze was hostile, cold, aloof. I was breathing hard, but I didn’t flinch. I was pretty sure of myself.
“He was dangerous,” I went on, trying to talk my way through the heavy silence that filled the room, “the drugs you had arranged to give him through Yugin were losing their effectiveness, and you had to do something. With Jonah’s strength and intelligence increasing by the day, it was only a matter of time before he became too violent, too destructive to have around. You needed to stop him before he killed somebody—or he came after you. So you— what’s the word your scientists use?—you ‘abandoned’ him. Gave him a knockout dose of something and then put him out the airlock. Simple, easy, effective. Problem solved, yes?”
He still said nothing, watching me like a hawk.
“I mean, that’s the problem with cloning, isn’t it? With trying to bioengineer the perfect man. It’s unpredictable. The results are unstable. You told me you’re building the future, but actually, in this respect at least, you’re revisiting the past. Reenacting the mistakes of fifty years ago. I’m sure your scientists thought they could figure it out, that they could avoid those mistakes, but that’s what scientists always say, isn’t it? They always have a theory, an idea. And they’ll say whatever they need to say to pursue that theory. But you learned your lesson this time, I hope. Didn’t you?”
I was trying to goad him into admitting it, into confirming what I thought was true but which I couldn’t really prove, but he was too smart for that. Slowly, his posture relaxed, and he leaned back in his chair. His face, which had looked for a minute like it was frozen in ice, thawed a little, and his mouth twitched in what might have been a smile.
“You may think you know something, Hendricks,” he said finally, his voice as smooth and silky as a pat of butter, “but I assure you, you do not. You are mistaken. Jonah is alive.”
“No, I don’t think so. Everyone here tells me you have eyes and ears everywhere on this Station. You know everything that goes on here. So how could Jonah slip away without you knowing? How could a shuttle dock here and take him onboard without you seeing it? And where would he go? Where would he hide? My bet is you know almost as much about the rest of the solar system as you do about this Station. I’m sure you have contacts on Earth, on Mars, on all of the other Stations. If Jonah were hiding somewhere, you would have found him by now. No, I’m sorry, Mr. Bryerson, he never left. He’s dead. Another genetic experiment gone wrong.”
He had a weird expression on his face that I couldn’t interpret.
“The one thing I don’t get is, why didn’t you pay off Yugin? Why leave him hanging? He told me Jonah owes him six thousand bucks. Seems like a pretty large loose end, doesn’t it?”
“Your imagination is running away with you, Hendricks,” he said in a soft voice. “I don’t know anyone named Yugin. I’m building the future here.” He made a little motion with his hand, which I assumed was some sort of signal, and I braced myself.
“If you think you’ll get rid of me too,” I said quickly, “think again. I’ve already written up my findings and sent them off to my editor at the Janus Report. Regardless of what happens to me, it will all be published, so getting rid of me accomplishes nothing. Why waste the effort?”
In reality, I hadn’t sent anything back yet, since it was all speculation —based mostly on the data I’d obtained from Lester, which I couldn’t verify or even reveal I had without ending up in prison for theft, but I figured he didn’t know any of that. In any case, it turned out not to matter.
He waved his hand negligently. “Actually, Mr. Hendricks,” he said with exaggerated nonchalance, “your theories, while interesting and creative, are irrelevant. Jonah returned to the Station just yesterday. Quite a coincidence, isn’t it?”
I stared at him. What?
Behind me, the door opened, and someone came in. I turned, my heart suddenly in my mouth, and sure enough—there, large as life, looking back at me with a sly grin on his broad, handsome face, was Jonah himself, very much alive and well.
***
Like I said before, we tell ourselves stories to try to make sense of the world. In my case, the story I tell myself is that the Jonah I saw that day was not the Jonah I’d been looking for. He was a replacement: J-12. Something they probably started working on the moment the old man shoved J-11 out the airlock. But I didn’t really know that for sure, and I certainly couldn’t prove it, since seconds after seeing him, I was politely but very firmly escorted out of Bryerson’s office and hustled onto a Landau shuttle bound for Earth. And maybe I was wrong. Maybe there was no J-11, or any other J’s—maybe there was just Jonah, Bryerson’s prodigal son miraculously returned to him, like he said. They certainly acted that way—hugging and embracing each other repeatedly. Maybe all that data Lester gave me was his own drug-addled invention. A fantasy—a story—that he told himself to make sense of Jonah’s disappearance. I mean, would a man kill his own son? Even if he was a bioengineered clone? It was hard to believe. On the other hand, Bryerson hadn’t denied it.
On the way home, I got a message from Amanda Jay. She gushed about how happy she and Jonah were, now that they were reunited, and she thanked me for, as she put it, “getting the old man to admit he knew where Jonah was all along.”
I hardly knew what to reply to that, so I didn’t. She had constructed a narrative of protective, almost motherly love enduring in the face of adversity, and that brooked no dissent. I shut my terminal down and spent the rest of the trip staring out the porthole of the shuttle at the huge bulk of Jupiter behind us. I watched as the clouds obscuring its surface twisted and turned, assuming all manner of shapes and colors, until it slowly faded away in the darkness of space and disappeared.
When I got back to Earth, I didn’t publish any of my findings. The news that Jonah had returned trumped the far-fetched story I had to tell—a story with no proof, no confirmation. Instead, I wrote this for myself, for posterity, for whatever else might be out there. To let people know I hadn’t given up searching for the truth.
T. J. Young
T. J. Young is a writer living in Seattle, WA. His work has appeared in a variety of online and
print publications. He occasionally travels to the Andromeda galaxy in search of material, but
otherwise spends most of his time reading 19th century novels. He is married with three
superhero children.