“You didn’t hear?” the taller of the two said. “Abigail Stickling died last night.”
“Died?” his partner said. “You mean base-jumped off the Monroe Hotel without a parachute.”
Con was stunned at the news, but it explained why there were so many protesters this morning. Dr. Abigail Stickling, the mother of human cloning and co-founder of Palingenesis, the bogeyman who haunted so many conspiracy theories, was dead. A suicide. This would be a day of triumphant celebration for the CoA and anyone else who believed human cloning to be an abomination.
“Either that or she forgot her broomstick,” the first guard said.
His partner snickered and made a whistling noise of something plummeting to the ground. Con walked away without a word, and the guards fell silent behind her. Good, she thought. Abigail Stickling might be a controversial figure, but she was also Con’s aunt. So the hell with the guards and their petty cruelty. The irony, though, was that Con shared similar thoughts about her aunt, a woman she barely knew beyond what she read in the media.
The last time she’d seen her aunt had been the commotion at her father’s funeral. An ugly fight had erupted between her mother and her aunt before the service. To this day, Con didn’t know what had set her mother off, but having grown up with her, she knew it wouldn’t have taken much. The Sticklings were a large clan—two sisters and four brothers—that enjoyed the spectacle of taking sides. Con’s uncles had all rallied around the grieving widow and against Abigail, who everyone agreed had put on airs since moving to Boston for school. It was also agreed that her interest in human cloning, still in the theoretical stages, was a sin of pride—a wretched befoulment of God’s design.
In the end, Abigail had been permanently disinvited from her parents’ home. Her name wasn’t to be spoken, her existence not to be acknowledged in any way. Everything Con knew about her aunt she’d learned either from the media or else from Gamma Jol, her father’s mother. Gamma Jol had never wanted anything to do with the Sticklings in the first place, her son’s courtship of Mary an enduring mystery. Perhaps that was why she took such pleasure in answering all the questions her granddaughter couldn’t ask anyone else.
For her part, Abigail had taken her shunning in stride and left West Texas, never to return. It had made her an inspiration of sorts to Con six years later when she’d rebelled against her mother’s strict expectations and gone to live with Gamma Jol. She’d resolved to follow her aunt’s example by getting out of Lanesboro and making something of herself, only her route would be music, not science. Her aunt had gotten out alright. She’d become both world famous and phenomenally wealthy, and she’d never spoken to anyone in the family again.
Not one solitary word.
Until the letters arrived.
Two years ago, lawyers had turned up at the doorstep of every member of the family, bearing legal paperwork gifting each with a clone. Con had to hand it to her aunt. What was the market price of an individual clone? Twenty-five, thirty million? No one in the family had ever had money, so to an outsider, it would’ve looked like an extraordinarily generous and extravagant gesture. To the family, however, it was Abigail rubbing her success in their faces by offering the one thing that none of them would ever accept.
If there was any doubt of her aunt’s intentions, the accompanying letter was a masterpiece of score-settling that perfectly encapsulated the resentments that had riven the family for decades. Con remembered the last sentence verbatim: I hope this small token of my affection allows you all to live long, long lives wallowing in your collective mediocrity. Apparently, Con’s mother wasn’t the only one in the family who could hold a grudge.
Con alone had accepted her aunt’s gift despite, or perhaps because of, it being wrapped in an emphatic fuck you. The mixed-race daughter of a fire-breathing white evangelical and a half-Black, half-Vietnamese army corporal, Con had grown up an outsider, contending with tormenters of every age and race. She’d had to fight her way through school. Too small to win most of them, she’d learned the art of survival instead. Stubbornness was a rich vein of ore running through both sides of her family, and Con mined it for the will to endure anything. Setting her jaw, she willed her way through childhood following three simple rules: never cry in public; never ask for help; never, ever give them the satisfaction of knowing they’d gotten to her. So when the taunting letter from her aunt had arrived, Con recognized the work of a bully. She tore up the letter and took the clone even though she wasn’t sure why she wanted it.