I’ve been thinking...

About Quack Grant?

... and his lamebrain theory. It would explain...

Why what’s-his-name?

... and who’s-its turned out so disappointingly.

Rockefeller, yes. Samuel is unconfirmed. Maybe you slipped up.

Meaning Samuel is our replica?

Making your abduction of Rockefeller a monumental blunder.

Except I used the selfsame skin cells when implanting each of Juliana’s eggs.

So neither of our chips?

Could have come from our old block.

Absorbed I think is the appropriate term.

Be that as it may, if we are a chimera...

Goat, lion, snake; who’s the serpent; Lucifer?

... your DNA must be lodged someplace other...

Than the lining of your big mouth? Where would you suggest?

It doesn’t really matter.

It most certainly does to me.

All that really matters is that our DNA is dual.

In which case we’re fraternal not identical twins?

Contradicting what heretofore both of us believed.

You believed; I’ve always regarded myself as brighter and better-looking.

Not to mention male?

Don’t get offensive; I surely know my gender. Naive of you, sex regardless, to mistake a clone for a perfect copy.

I was young, impressionably ambitious.

You mean certifiably schizoid and latently homosexual.

Let’s leave psychoanalysis, if you please, to dispassionate professionals—I'll retract my slur with respect to your masculinity.

Do whatever you like; my analysis stands.

            Stuy-Rem waxes blank, stares as though oblivious to an unannounced visitor, and simulates a trance in response to his overwrought guest.

ROCKEFELLER

There’s been a fire.

            As desperate as he is to choke information from his father—any and every bit of data that might prove helpful in stabilizing Yvette (left at home unattended, locked in a closet), Rockefeller falters, guilt conspiring with panic to stymie his resolve. Like a disconnected island—the same land mass ripped suddenly asunder—offshoot looks to origin... differences irreconcilable:

he who feels compassion for a tragic human guinea pig

he who caused that tragedy

he who wants to cure Yvette, or salvage what is left of her

he who decided on traits to alter, traits to leave intact

he who first abused then tried to safeguard Yvette's isolation

he who made a specimen that society never would condone.

Look at the poor boy.

Tearing himself to shreds, he is.

Worried sick about you-know-who...

Provided she survived.

... would be my guess.

Mine would be he’s worried about what punishment lies in store for playing with matches.

Assuming he’s the firebug.

It’s written all over him.

Wants to have his cake.

And to eat her, too.

Wants to be forgiven.

And to revel in self-righteousness.

ROCKEFELLER

How could you, Rem?

Told you so; here it
comes.

ROCKEFELLER

How could you create, concoct those wretched aberrations...

The ones you cremated?

ROCKEFELLER

... in that Godforsaken lab?

Oh, oh; has America...

Or his fiancée?

... shown our lad The Light?

ROCKEFELLER

Criminal, then. Forget religious considerations; let’s focus on ethics.

Did you speak aloud?

Not I.

Me, neither.

STUY-REM

You’re reading our thoughts?

ROCKEFELLER

Tit for tat, Rem. Tit for tat.

Twice; he mentioned two tits.

Very Freudian.

Very chauvinistic.

Must have her on ice.

STUY-REM

Tell us, if you would, how the conflagration started. You have our undivided attention.

            His old self again (even the tics and twitches have come to a halt), Remington views his clone with hateful affection, emotions overlapping, overwhelming his bifurcated consciousness—a battleground dichotomy young Rockefeller shares.

ROCKEFELLER

It was an accident. There was a brief power outage. In my fumbling for the backup I must have hit a switch. As power came back on, your secret room opened. Was she—it—ever viable? I mean before you pickled her? I thought it was a child until I saw how she’d been altered—custom-built, you might say. To sate some psychopathic edophile? What could have possessed you to conceive such...

REMINGTON

You were talking about the fire, how it started accidentally.

            Rockefeller, reining in his outrage, tries to refocus.

ROCKEFELLER

Accidentally on purpose, in a sense; I started smashing things. Threw a regular tantrum, if you want to know the truth. Some chemicals got spilled; they must have been combustible. Before I knew what happened, the place was an inferno. It was all I could do to get Yvette...

REMINGTON

Ah, yes; your pet pussycat, your interim fiancée—or has Yvette deposed altogether her knocked-up predecessor?

            Reminded of his urgent situation, Fell bites his tongue; lengthy explanations and/or condemnations will hardly serve his purpose; Rem’s cooperation must be won, without delay, to keep Yvette alive.

ROCKEFELLER

I need your help. I realize I’ve ruined...

REMINGTON

Everything I’ve achieved in twenty-plus years of research. Like THAT.

(He snaps his fingers.)

Destroyed without a smidgeon of scholarly comprehension. Robotics is your chosen field, whereas I have spent a lifetime working in flesh and blood. How can you begin to fathom that which your sanctimonious anger just reduced to ashes? Ignorance may be bliss, young man, to those of lesser wits; to ours it earns contempt for wreaking such disaster. Yvette is all that’s left? What a fucking irony.

            Like pulling down a visor, Stuy-Rem reconfigures his formerly deadpan face—gargoyle-like contortions fitfully recommencing.