“Con, who you got?” the girl asked. For whatever reason, Con had a weird credibility with all the kids who frequented the shop. Maybe it was because she rarely left the studio and that mysterious obsessiveness made her cool with kids desperate for something to be obsessed about. She appreciated how little any of them seemed to care that she was a clone. It made her hopeful for the future.
“Yeah, who?” the Trent Reznor fan said.
“And don’t say Bowie,” the girl admonished. “You say Bowie for everything.”
Con gave the girl a guilty-as-charged shrug, and the teens all laughed.
“Well,” Con said thoughtfully, remembering old arguments in the back of the van. “My old friend Tommy Diop would have said Billy Preston.”
“Who?” the first boy demanded.
“The fifth Beatle. Played that great electric piano on ‘Don’t Let Me Down,’” the girl said, rolling her eyes, which did not go over big with the boys.
“But who do you think?” the Trent Reznor fan asked, which quieted the others.
“Well, for my money, it was Tommy Diop. Man, could he play.”
“Who’s that?” they all asked.
“He was in a band called Awaken the Ghosts,” Con said, picturing the delighted grin on Tommy’s face whenever he played. Even during their most serious songs, which drove Zhi around the bend.
The kids looked among themselves, none recognizing the name. It wasn’t surprising, but still, Con felt a little sad. Zhi Duan, Hugh Balzan, Tommy Diop—her friends, her bandmates. They’d lived. They’d dreamed. They’d died. And already their memory was fading. Con thought about setting the teenagers straight, but for what? Most of life is lived to be forgotten. That was the way of things, cruel though it felt when it was your life that would be lost.
Still, she figured there was always a chance that one of these kids would go home and look up the band. Then, curious or even bored, they would listen to a few of the old songs. Maybe like them enough to share them with friends. Or maybe they were teenagers with other things to worry about, and they’d forget this conversation the moment they left the store. Either way, it had no effect on the lives that her friends had led. If you lived your life to be remembered when you were gone, you were wasting your time.
When the kids left, Con went back to her notebook. The album she’d been envisioning since the crash had grown far beyond its initial scope. She’d pared the song list down to two twelve-track collections. The first was composed of songs that her original had written and recorded before her death. The second twelve were all songs influenced by her experience since her download. She thought the two halves worked well together, bookends on the twin lives she’d led. Hopefully people would listen with an open mind. She still had a childlike belief in music’s ability to bridge even the bitterest divides.
With a little luck, she’d live long enough to hear it played from start to finish. If not, she trusted Stephie to finish it for her. There was so much left to do—she hadn’t even settled on a title. For a while, she’d toyed with Coda, but that felt a little on the nose. Then Constants, but she didn’t want her final contribution to the world to be a bad pun. Lately, she’d been thinking about calling it Awaken the Ghosts, but she hadn’t run it by Stephie, who should have a say. Why were titles so hard?
When the shopkeeper’s bell above the front door jingled, Con glanced up to see if the customer looked the sort to buy three guitars. Well, he could certainly afford it, but she didn’t take him for the musical type.
“Hello, Mr. Gaddis. I was wondering when you’d show up,” she said.
“Hello, Constance,” he said, shaking off the rain. “Honestly, I’ve been meaning to get down here sooner, but things have been so busy. Brooke took a leave of absence from the company, and the board asked me to step in for her.”
Con put down her pen but didn’t stand up from the stool behind the counter. It felt important to remain still and let him come to her. “Strange to see you this far south without an armed escort.”
“Well, a lot has changed,” Gaddis said.
“Congratulations on winning your case.”
“Thank you, but it’s really all our case, isn’t it?” Gaddis replied with the gravitas of a seasoned politician, but she supposed it was true. In a stunning five-to-four decision, the Supreme Court had ruled for the plaintiff in the case Gaddis v. Virginia. In finding that the clone of Vernon Gaddis was also the person Vernon Gaddis, it had swept aside the patchwork of state anti-clone laws and extended federal protections to all clones. The decision had thrown the country into an uproar that seemed far from being over. Children of Adam had seen its membership rolls triple virtually overnight. Con hadn’t heard from Franklin Butler, not even a thank-you note for the idea. He was everywhere these days in full crusader and firebrand mode, vowing not to rest until the travesty of this ruling was overturned, and the original sin of human cloning was cleansed from America’s soul. There were even whispers of a run for president in ’44.