Posted by AlOmega on July 16, 2001 at 19:34:34:
When I went to “Adventure, Incorporated” I still had a hard time believing it. Of course genetics and cloning had come a long way since the beginning of the Twenty First century. But still the idea of living out a fantasy in real life was in its infancy. Sure a few virtual reality business got going in the 2020s but none of them really appealed to the general population and so they died out.
The interior was just like that of any office. Most had not changed in last fifty years. Still I didn’t really believe that the receptionist was a clone. At not until she spoke. Then I heard it. The voice was just a little too smooth - sort of like water flowing gently to the sea. Human voices are rough from usage. Some say that is because our atmosphere is still suffering from the pollutants of the last century but science has proven that is not the case.
“Good morning, Mr. Bates,” said a male dressed in a rather conservative pale green suit. I couldn’t help but observe that he was wearing a tie over a dark green shirt. “My name is Frank Bristle. I’m your Contact for this adventure.. “ Here he paused shuffling a few papers as he sat. “er.. . I’m terribly sorry, your revenge, I see. I’m so sorry, we seldom receive these requests. They seem so pointless what with...”
I looked at him as if he were some roach I wanted to squash.
“So sorry, again.” Bristle said adjusting his glasses. Why did he wear glasses? I thought they, like his tie, were something we had outgrown.
“Mr. Bates? Norman?” I heard him say in the back of my mind.
“Who gave you permission to call me by my first name!” I hammered rhetorically.
“I seem to be apologizing quite a bit lately, Mr. Bates”
I interrupted the Contact or Guide as the Adventure reps were sometimes called.
“I’m sorry. I am rather new at this and your receptionist was so lifelike and real. Hard to accept that she is a clone.”
“Oh Shella? Well she’s an older model really. Clones live about thirty years if left alone. However, we recycle them every two years.”
“Don’t they mind?”
“Mind. Of course not. They know their function is limited. And their lifespan too. That is why we at Adventures Incorporated expect to introduce them as servants in a year or two. That is if that bill in congress doesn’t pass. However...”
“Please could we get on with this.”
“But of course. You mentioned you wanted to create a Revenge scenario. What kind could we create?”
“I want to kill my wife.”
“Well, Mr. Bates. We have performed domestic squabbles where husband and wife could act out their aggressive natures but..”
“That’s not what I want.”
“Did you bring a lock of her hair, some blood perhaps, or a bone? We must have ... .”
“Here, Sir. A lock of her hair. And my memories of her. They are here,” I said, tapping my skull.
“You know what you are requesting, Sir?”
“Yes. Of course.”
“We are required to inform you anyway. You have asked to ‘kill your wife’. Are you prepared for murder?”
“Yes, yes. Now lets get on with it.”
“Then sign the contract, please. It is a standard contract. No special clauses or anything other than a contract to kill the clone of your wife. Is that acceptable?”
“Sure. Now I’ve signed it. What’s next?”
“Of course, please follow me.”
We entered a much smaller room furnished with only a long black table.
“Please lie down, Sir. Let your thoughts drift. Drift, drift.... drift.. Drift. To the days when you first met. Remember? When you...”
I was at the Grand Reception Hall. I had just received my Fifth prize in Physics for completing the Unified Theory. Clarifying it actually. Someone else had done the work earlier. I had just tightened up a few of the loose ends. I was still amazed that anyone paid me any attention.
Then I saw Tracy. Twenty years younger she was and starting a wonderful carrier in Physics. I fell in love with her then and there. It wasn’t that I had never been married. But my first wife died in childbirth. It was still early in the Twenty First Century after all. Yet Tracy was so like her full of originality and plans for living. We talked of science and poetry. Our tastes in art and books were mirror images of each other. We were so much alike and had so much in common that I asked her to marry me that first whirlwind week.
After we were married, the courtship never stopped. I was always there for her and she was always there for me. We worked and played always together.
“How can you live with an old man like me?” I asked once.
“How can I not live with you. I love you. I need you. You are the One I’ve searched my whole life for.”
So sweet was her answer that I never questioned anything she wanted or asked for.
That was until last week.
It was the smell in the air that alerted me. I had not been home this early in a long time. She had started working nights on a “special project”. Special Project my ass, I saw on opening the bedroom door. On our bed they were, her and a snottnosed assistant that I had fired from my own project the week before.
“Hello, Darling,” she said not bothering to cover herself. He was still inside her for God’s sake and she could still say that?! If I had had a gun, I would have killed them both. Still I managed to contain my anger to a boil within my guts.
“I hope I’m not disturbing you,” I managed to say without a quiver in my voice.
“Of course, Darling. I’ll only be a few minutes. Oh, and please ask Cook to prepare something.”
She said this in her prettiest voice. I closed the door gently and left the house.
I became conscious almost at once and sat up. The memory of her leaving was still fresh but that had happened three days ago. Mr. Bristle helped me up.
“Now that wasn’t too bad now was it?” The look in my eyes must of been too much as he added
another apology. He led me into a second room with a long table.
“Mr. Bates, we need some time for the cloning process to take hold and for your “Revenge” to take place. The overall process will take approximately sixteen days. Will you wait here or go home?”
At the prospects of going to an empty house for sixteen days, I shuddered. There was no way I could do that and remain sane.
“If I have to wait another minute, I’ll simply kill myself”.
“Quite so, Mr. Bates. Then if you will recline on this bed, you will sleep until the sixteen days are up. You understand what you must do.”
“Of course, you ninny. That’s what I’m paying for.”
“Yes. Then please rest.”
Mr. Bristle left soon thereafter and I drifted into a slumber punctuated by birds and flowers and soft running mountain springs. The dreams were pleasant enough after the nightmare of reality. I had not been lying about committing suicide. But dreams must end and soon this one did, also. I woke in a different room where I had been. Looking around, I saw it was just like my bedroom at home. It didn’t just ‘look’ like my bedroom. It was my bedroom. I remembered the glass half full of milk still on the night stand. I stood still dressed in my pajamas. I turned on hearing the bathroom door open.
There stood Tracy in her prettiest snow white negligee. It was silk and trimmed in lace. I had always liked it because it made her seem so sweet and innocent. My heart ached with love. She walked to me and snuggled up as she had always done.
“Do it.” punctuated the silence of the moment. What was she saying?
“Do it,” she repeated.
“Wha... What are you saying?” I couldn’t comprehend it.
“Kill me, of course,” she said looking at me with such love in her eyes as I hadn’t seen since we had been married. How could she say that.
“I was made for you to kill me,” she added taking my hand in hers. “It is my function.”
“B-but I ca-can’t. Don’t you see? I love you too much. Your so perfect, so beautiful. So much better than you ever were. I can’t...”
“But you must. You see me like you always imagined me but without the imperfections that the
original Tracy had. You must kill me.”
“No. I’ve changed my mind. We can go away. No one will ever know. Then...”
“But we cannot, my Love. Only you are real. Only you can leave. And only when you kill me. Please.”
I took her in my arms and held her close feeling her warm flesh on mine. She was real, damn it! I was so sexually excited, I could hardly wait.
“Lets make love. Now.”
“Of course, Dear. I was made for you. But then you must kill me. If you don’t, I will be broken down into the composite soup I was born from. I cannot stand that pain. It would be too horrible.”
“But how can I,” I asked pushing her away. “I love you. We could..”
“That is all right, Darling. Let’s make love and talk about it later.”
It hadn’t been that long but for me it had been forever. The next instant she was on the bed, my hands beneath her negligee warming to her flesh. She tried to help me, but I couldn’t wait. Impatiently, I clutched at her soft, white negligee tearing it in the process and the seams parted. I fumbled with my own nightwear and then was on top of her, wild in my frenzy, as my hard, throbbing shaft probed and searched.
She reached down to help guide me but at the same time started leering.
“You want it, I know you do.
“Just like Bob.”
Why did she have to add that. Why, I thought thrusting again and again. I’d always knew the little prick was Bob but why now? She kept taunting as I worked frantically, furiously. I couldn’t stop as red clouds gathered together in my mind. I released her breasts - those perfect breasts that Bob had held when I saw them together. Where my hands had been, red marks were clearly visible. I did return my hands to her but in my frenzy and blind rage, I tightened them about her throat.
It was her voice that I wanted to crush. The perfect voice that had spoke of Bob and what they had done together. I thrust my thumbs deep into the trachea of her neck. Deeper and deeper I thrust with my penis and thumbs. Her words became horrible gargling sounds that soon ceased.
Yet even through the anger and fury that clouded my vision, I could see her smiling. I was crushing her soft windpipe. I could feel the bones of her neck move and break as she shuddered. Yet still she smiled. I was experiencing the most sexual gratification I ever had. And through it all, she only smiled.
And then it was over. Exhausted, I flopped on top as I fought to gain control of my own breathing. As I slid over to the side, I realized what had just happened. Though afraid to see what I knew I would find, I turned my head and looked at Tracy. Her face was dark and mottled framed with her lovely blond hair. Her
breasts were bruised with my fingermarks but the canvas of her throat was a patchwork of blue, black and red. She was dead. Yet even though her darkened tongue was bitten in her agony, she still retained a smile. Her eyes reddened by the bursting capillaries still smiled. She had what she wanted, I realized. She had fulfilled her function.
With her, I died.
I didn’t feel the hand on my shoulder when Bristol touched me. Nor did I hear the arresting officer’s statements. While I had been in stasis, a law giving clones the same rights as every other citizen had been passed. Still my attorney argued that not only had the law not been passed when I had entered stasis, but I was unaware of its passage after stasis. He also contended that Tracy was actually alive and consequently I never committed a murder. While the prosecution concurred with my attorney’s arguments, she countered that DNA tests confirmed that indeed I must have murdered my wife. There was no record of Tracy anywhere else - no proof that she had not been murdered by me. None of the detectives hired by my attorney ever found a record of her other than the clone I had killed. I was doomed. It seem I was to be a Test case for the new law. And of course the penalty was death.
“You have a visitor.” I heard two days before my execution. I didn’t care. Whether I had murdered my wife or not, the result was going to be the same. I assumed my ‘visitor’ was just another news hound.
“Hello, Norman,” came a sultry voice. I shot straight up. That voice! I knew it.
“Tracy,” I cried leaping to the small window cut into the harsh steel door. “Where have you been?”
She smiled her sly smile that I knew meant she had something on her mind.
“But my Darling, I was here all along. You killed me didn’t you. I felt your hands around my neck squeezing until I expired.”
“But you know that’s not true. That was a clone I killed. A clone that I never wanted to kill but for an accident. I only wanted you to return to me.”
“Return to you?” she laughed. “You pathetic bastard. I just needed your notes from that project you worked so hard on. If you hadn’t fired Bob, I would have had all your work for myself. “
“But why? Why?!”
“The money, you dipshit. All the work you did in Physics. All the prizes in the world you won. And hardly anything to show for all that. I wanted more. Not that you weren’t a good lover. No, you were much better than that twirp, Bob. I dropped him when I hid in Mexico.”
“But where? How?”
“You still don’t see? My God you’re stupid. I approached a Mr. Frank Bristle of Adventures, Inc.”
As a light seemed to break in my battered brain, she smiled again.
“Yes, Sweety. It was my idea from the start. That ‘lock of hair’ was not enough to make a clone. He needed some blood and bone marrow. How else to get it than from the source. And that was why the cops found you so quickly. He alerted them. If only you knew cloning more. But no, that was my branch,
biophysics. You always treated it as a stepchild. Now I’m glad you did.”
“Look. I’ll give you everything. I ...”
“Sorry, Love. I GOT everything.” She turned and walked away as I started screaming. I could just see her from my cell window as she stopped by her car and waved. I knew it was hopeless to want her back but still I cried for her. After a while, I fell to my knees and cried. A man in his fifties crying. How pathetic.
But I didn’t care. Some say revenge is sweet. They are wrong.