Midway: Chapter 42

  “Dhika?” 

  “Yes?”

  “I miss Tycho…”  

  Dhika had returned to her office after talking with Johannes.  She hadn’t really planned on returning there, it was just where her body had taken her as she walked in a daze after speaking with him.  She’d been staring at the wall for several minutes, but for how many minutes she was not sure.  When the door chimed, she winked the door open out of reflex and Bao entered.   The girl was quite clearly depressed.   Her posture was slumped in a way Dhika had never seen in the girl before, and she was far less animated than usual; she seemed grey somehow.  People were of course varying in how they were dealing with recent events, and some were having a harder time with it all than others.

  “I know, sweetheart…” Dhika said as she picked Bao up and sat the girl on her lap.  “I really miss him too.”

  “Our new teacher isn’t the same… he was supposed to be temporary but now people are saying he’s going to be made the teacher permanently.”

  “Is he really that bad?”

  “Well no… he’s just really strict.  He’s not fun, like… like Tycho was.”

  “Right…” Dhika responded, gently swiveling them back and forth.  “Tycho was my best friend, you know.”  Bao just nodded that she understood.  She then stood the girl up in front of her.  “Bao, what if we could make a clone of Tycho, what would you think of that?”

  “What’s a clone?” Bao asked.  It wasn’t something she‘d learned yet.

  “Well…” your parents are in the process of having a second child right?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you know that that child will be the product of your father’s genes and another American woman’s genes being combined and shuffled together to create a new and unique American genome, right?”

  “Yes…”  Bao said, believing that she was following so far.

  “Well, instead of combining two people like that, we also have the ability to instead create a baby with the exact same genes as somebody who already existed… like Tycho.   We call a being like that a clone.”

  “Oh…” Bao understood, at least she now knew what the word meant anyway.  “We can do that?”

  “Oh yes Bao, we can create a person really with any kind of genes we want to, whether extremely unusual or... well, or an exact copy of an existing one.”

  “Okay… and why would we want to do that with Tycho?” Bao asked.

  “Oh I’m not saying we do dear, I’m just… I’m just asking what you’d think of the idea, if you can think of any reason why we should… or shouldn’t.”

  “Would he be the same person when he grew up?”

  “Hopefully not…” Dhika declared ironically, and then felt a little sick at herself in response.   “What I mean is um… no.  No he’d be a distinctly different person from the Tycho we knew… but we’d be able to see some of the Tycho we knew in him, kind of the way we can all see a bit of your mom in you, but probably more so.”

  “But who would be his mom?” 

  “Well, I guess I would be.” Dhika answered

  “And I could be like a big sister to him too!  Like the new brother I’m already getting!  I could have two baby brothers!” the girl exclaimed excitedly

  “I like the sound of that too, dear.” 

   

  “Mom?  Can I talk to you?” Dhika asked, after the door opened onto her mother’s private single suite.

  “Of course dear, what’s on your mind?” her mother asked without looking up from her medium scroll.

  “I’m dropping out of the race to be captain.  I decided so today and I wanted to tell you personally before I made any announcement.”

  “What?  Why??”

  “I just don’t want it Mom… so much has changed in my life so quickly, so dramatically I… I guess I just don’t want to court any further changes right now.  My work is the only part of my life that is still consistent and… well, I want to hold on to it; at least for now.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that Dhika… I was really hoping for you to win and for us to be able to work together.  I think I understand though, your best friend and your lover… first for you to be so unfortunate as to have them be different people, and then to lose them both in only a matter of days… I think I understand.  I was gonna have to publicly endorse Seth to get Johannes to endorse you anyways, since it wouldn’t’ve been appropriate for me to endorse you myself.   I guess none of that’ll be necessary now.”

  “Yes…  I saw Johannes a while ago and he told me about your little agreement.”

  “Oh… okay then.”

  “Yes, yes he told me about that… and he asked me to impregnate myself with a clone of Tycho.”  Her mother dropped her scroll in surprise and it fell to the floor.  It was late in the evening and she’d been reading again.

  “Wha…what?   Excuse me??”  Dhika took a moment to relish unnerving her mother so, and so abruptly.

  “Well to be more precise, a third clone of Markus Bowland.  Johannes was the first and Tycho was the second.  He thinks they all deserve another chance to get it all right.”
“That is so completely absurd!!  There was a conflict in Maharet as to what was more pressingly shocking, her initial disbelief over the revelation of the cloning program, or that Johannes had tried to coerce her daughter into the whole web of lies and conspiracy.  Currently the far higher believability of Johannes making such a request drew her focus.  “If that’s all true then what this last Tycho did is only proof positive that he never should have been created in the first place!!”  Maharet bolted to her feet and started furiously pacing back and forth in her living room.  “I can’t believe that old man Bowland would do that, I always knew there was something off about that guy…   Are you sure?  And what does that mean?  For fuck’s sakes, the fucking nerve of Johannes… if he’s determined Dhika, he won’t stop with you.  When you say no, he’ll find someone else silly and stupid enough to conspire with him.”

  “He won’t have to.”

  Maharet stopped pacing dead in her tracks.  She was frozen with her back to Dhika upon hearing the words come out of her daughter.   She then turned to face Dhika with a deadly serious expression on her face.  “Oh Dhika… Oh you can’t, I… I forbid it!” she exclaimed, flabbergasted.   “I absolutely forbid it!  Dhika surely you must see what utter madness this is, you… you just can’t!”

  “You can’t forbid it Mom.  With no current captain there’s no tie-breaking vote between you and Johannes and if you really want to press it, technically I’m the acting captain until the election anyways, so really it’s up to me,” Dhika stated matter of factly.

  “Dhika,” her mother came up to her, gently held her arm, and looked very seriously into her eyes.   She seemed deeply and genuinely afraid.   “Dhika this is crazy, you must see that!  You have no idea what you’re doing!”

  “Actually Mom, I have a better idea of what I’m doing than you do.  But I guess that’ll all come out in the wash…”

  “What do you mean?” her mother asked, bewildered.

  “You’ll see Mom… you’ll see,” Dhika said as she moved towards the door to leave.  “Everything will become clear soon enough…”