Deadly Design - Emarsan Page 0,105
. .” He struggles to find the right words. “You’re the real Superman. Or you could be.
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Copyright © 2015 by Debra Dockter.
FOR REVIEWING PURPOSES ONLY--NOT FOR SALE
And I’m not just talking about the whole living-for-centuries thing, and yes, I know about all that. It was right there in his research, but I deleted that part. I mean, talk about tempting.
Immortality would be so awesome, but really, while the guy was a nutcase, he did have a point about the whole overpopulation thing. I could open that Pandora’s box.” He gestures like he’s pushing a button on a computer and makes a popping noise with his mouth. “I made the part of his research that could make people be AARP members for like . . . ever, go bye-bye. But the rest of it, the part where he designed you and the others, I kept all that. I mean, holy shit, that’s exciting. The potential in you is so freaking amazing. Do you want to know how he did it?”
The blood pressure cuff starts squeezing my arm again, and that’s good. I need the physical sensation. I don’t hurt anymore.
I’m not dizzy or even that tired, but my head is starting to spin just the same, trying to keep up with the guy who’s giving me a sixty-forty chance to survive.
“You have multiple parents,” he says, still amazed. “It’s true.
Nine of them. He used genetic information from eight different donors to create you. One, may I inform you, who won a silver medal in the Olympics.”
“But how’s that possible?”
“The Human Genome project mapped out all the genetic codes for various attributes and diseases. He used genetic material from different women, from their eggs. He took out the parts he wanted and basically plugged them into you—well, into your mother’s egg. Instead of one mother and one father, 3 1 2
Copyright © 2015 by Debra Dockter.
FOR REVIEWING PURPOSES ONLY--NOT FOR SALE
you have Mom, Dad, and Mom, Mom, Mom, Mom, Mom, Mom. There’s kind of some bad news about the dad part.”
He looks at me like he’s not sure if he should finish.
“Go ahead,” I say, because it’s time—time to lay it all out there. Time to know everything.
He sighs. “You have to remember, the guy was a total narcis-sist. Most brilliant, overly intelligent people are. Edward Bartholomew—yeah. Totally. Now, supposedly he was rendered sterile from all the chemo and crap he went through as a kid, but he used his own stem cells to create sperm. He had to use his own bone marrow to do that. Can you imagine . . .” He lifts his hands like he’s about to stab a large needle into his own hip to harvest his bone marrow. He must feel my impatience because he stops midstab. “I digress. But science is so damn amazing, and he basically . . .” Rubenstein grimaces and grasps at his hair with both hands. “He used his own sperm to create you, not your father’s, or who you think of as your father,” he says very quickly.
I want to kill Edward Bartholomew. I want to build a fucking time machine, so that I can go back to that day in his condo and choke the fucking life out of him!
“Interestingly enough,” Rubenstein says, “that makes Dr.
Claudia Bartholomew your aunt.”
“No! No fucking way!”
“Calm down,” he says. “You don’t want me to have to sedate you, do you?” He checks my vital signs on the display screen next to my bed.
“I know who my parents are,” I say calmly, because I don’t 3 1 3
Copyright © 2015 by Debra Dockter.
FOR REVIEWING PURPOSES ONLY--NOT FOR SALE
want to get knocked out again, and because I do know who they are.
“Look on the bright side. He was really intelligent, which means so are you. The whole having the pharmacist call me and ask for heart medication, that was brilliant. You have no idea what your potential is, especially if you end up living for a few hundred years. Think of the knowledge you could obtain.
Things I can’t even imagine. That’s why I really don’t want you to die. You’re the only one left, and the potential inside you is so amazing!”
“Can you take the sequence out? Change it so that I’ll live a normal number of years, if the new heart works, that is?”
He looks horrified, shocked. He even turns around to look behind him like maybe I’m talking to someone else, about something else, because who wouldn’t want to live for