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It’s now been a couple of weeks since my reunion with Andrew, and the start of a whole new phase of our lives, one that has brought light but also new tragedy and complication.
We had one week before I learned of the tragedy. I got my desperate wish, born of another long confinement with a Kyle—I was back with Andrew in the Mothership.
Always with an eye to poetic symmetry, Andrew had brought the Mothership back to the same campsite where I’d left him four years ago. It was a moonlit night as I hiked through the woods of my vision quest. I felt the air tingling with our telepathic bond and the sense of Andrew aware of my imminent arrival.
Our first eye contact and hug felt like worlds colliding. We held on to each other tightly, each of us trying to prove through our bodies that the reunion was an actual physical reality, while both of us wept tears of gratitude.
With his photographer’s eye, Andrew had reconstructed the campsite with every matching detail so that it would look as if I had been gone for only a day. He even made the same pasta primavera with garlic bread dinner he had the night before my departure. He apologized for the sentimentality, but I deeply appreciated his efforts to make things seem familiar. The passionately desperate lovemaking that night was another mirror event, but perhaps less bittersweet, as it now marked an arrival instead of a departure.
And yet . . . despite all these efforts at a honeymoon reunion, it was not quite as idyllic as each of us had imagined. Our ecstasy hid an underlying dissonance. Our non-aging bodies remembered each other easily, but our psyches had four years of missing time. I had not been gone for only a day, and the perfectly restored campsite was a sentimental snowflake paperweight that shattered in the light of morning.
There was a price to be paid for the telepathic boundary I had set up when I departed on my mission of intervention. The unease we felt at dinner, which we both assumed was just reunion shock, did not pass the next day. We quickly regained access to each other, but it was jarring and awkward for both of us. The telepathic intimacy we had before I left had developed gradually with daily presence in each other’s lives, often together twenty-four hours a day for long stretches.
But now a yawning blank zone lay between us—years of difficult experiences missing from our knowledge of each other. It took a couple of days to find a new and shaky equilibrium, neither of us the person we once were. This was a source of ongoing cognitive dissonance. We each held onto the mental model of who the other was when we’d parted, and now those old models kept colliding with new realities.
We could still pick up each other’s cues and read the other’s feelings at a glance, but for a few days at least there was an uncanny valley of dissimilarity while our internalized models of each other struggled to catch up. We both felt the process, but it was Andrew’s brilliantly analytical mind that diagnosed it so starkly. And, in case it’s not obvious, Andrew is the one who expanded my vocabulary and who greatly advanced my thinking.
We were off-rhythm with each other during that first week. We knew we were misreading each other, able to sense each other’s feelings, but not as able as we once were to understand their source. Andrew couldn’t help but feel he had been abandoned, and though his mind understood what I had to do and why, his emotional self—like many a brilliant thinking type’s—is less developed, and he still felt hurt, as if my absence had been a punishment.
I had similar problems with my emotions. I had to repress so many of them to endure the time with Kyle, and a childish part of me felt I deserved to come back to an Andrew identical to the one I had left behind, or rather, to the idealized and simplified image of the one I had left behind, and not the full complexity of the actual Andrew, whom another part of me recognizes as the person I really need.
I felt tormenting guilt about all of this, because I was the one who chose to abandon Andrew and was the one who seemed most diminished by years of self-imposed captivity. I had become darker—we both had, in different ways—with magical enthusiasms and humor harder to find.
I had encouraged Andrew, before I left, to form new relationships. His connection with Alex had deepened in my absence—they had even become interdimensional lovers, which I was actually happy to learn. But Alex had withdrawn just before my arrival. He returned to visit each of us in our dreams, blessing our reunion before he went off to share with his Guild what he learned from his symbiosis with Andrew. This was another source of guilt—the reunion with me had also cost Andrew another separation from Alex.
What we could rely on, though, was the unwavering goodwill and love we had for each other. Our capacities for empathy and understanding had continued to grow while we were apart, and that allowed us to gradually progress through the dissonance. What we needed was more space without a pressing agenda to sort through all that had changed, but that was not to be. The process of finding each other was interrupted after that first week by a call from Kyle disclosing horrific news he had been keeping from me for a few weeks.
The Friends community, which I was sure I had saved by intervening to prevent the Whip, had all been savagely murdered by a lone gunman.
I consoled myself during the years of isolation with Kyle that I was saving The Friends from destruction, and now they had been destroyed by another cause. I was trying to save the whole species, of course, but that was more of an abstraction. The Friends were the face and heart of the species for me.
Like Andrew with his reproduced campsite, I had kept an idealized, sentimental image of them with me as if they were all inside a beautiful snowflake paperweight I carried close to my heart. But now it had shattered into glass splinters of horror and grief. My mom, Matthew, Dorothy and everyone else in the community brutally murdered. The other version of me—the lone survivor, and no doubt horribly traumatized.
Only later did I recognize the parallelism, as if something—an immutable aspect of fate, or maybe even Viealetta—had wanted the other Tommy’s life to include the same trauma of being the sole survivor of The Friends community.
I was trembling with grief and horror, unable to even ask questions to clarify who the gunman was and what motivated him. Meanwhile, Kyle, able to predict some of my reaction, but too limited by his psychopathy to empathize, added a bunch of simulated therapeutic talk he had copied from skimming grief counseling content online. I let him roll with his prepared script, which I heard as so much background psychobabble. Kyle deserves no blame for this—if anything, it is creditable that he made an effort to prepare as best he could for something he was not designed for.
And the massacre was already a few weeks old.
The telepathic walls I had put around myself had worked too well. I should have been grieving for them when I was instead plotting my reunion with Andrew. Kyle told me he had kept the news from me for my own good, that he thought I should be reunited with Andrew before I learned of it, and I have to admit, there was some sense in that. That he already knew of the massacre when he threw his half-million-dollar “birthday party” on the veranda was creepy, but the kind of lapse one has to forgive in a psychopath.
I have trouble remembering his exact words because I was shaking and hyperventilating, and unable to speak. My attention to him resumed when it needed to.
“My cursory surveillance was, very regrettably, insufficient to prevent the catastrophe, though I learned of it soon after. But what I was able to do . . .” Kyle paused for dramatic effect. “was indirectly save the life of young Tommy . . .”
He let me assume, at first, that young Tommy was among the dead. Now he brought out this news like it was a grand consolation prize, credited to himself, as if a living Tommy had just sprung out of a giant birthday cake.
The lack of emotional intelligence in this might once have infuriated me, but I stoically accepted the psychopathic and narcissistic showman’s attempt at consolation. And of course, I was grateful for—my other self’s—survival. This is awkward, because I can’t keep calling him my “other self,” which is demeaning, as if his personhood belongs to me. Realizing we needed some name to distinguish him from me, Andrew and I, for now at least, call him Tommy 2.
Kyle claimed he had indirectly saved Tommy 2’s life through an intervention he had also kept from me, an intervention I would have fought with my life to prevent. But apparently, I would have been wrong, because if Kyle is to be believed—and I actually do believe him—his machinations did, indirectly, save Tommy 2’s life.
The shocking news continued, and although I was paralyzed by grief, I forced myself to pay close attention.
After Kyle assassinated Vaughn and gained access to all his secret records, he learned that Vaughn had created a kind of backup in case he, Kyle, met with an accident or proved otherwise unsuitable. Another mutant had been engineered a year after he was created, with a different surrogate mother and a different genetic formula should The Special Sauce, Kyle’s formulation, prove undesirable. This boy was adopted by a wealthy, unknowing German couple who later immigrated to the States, where their son, Ulrich, renamed himself Max. The parents never even told him he was adopted.
Even though Kyle had no genetic link to this other engineered mutant, he said he thought of him as a little brother, the only other person to share much of his origin story. Perhaps this was a ploy to make his interest in his fellow GMO seem sympathetic, but I’m not sure. Kyle, especially this version of him, is a highly complex being and someone easy to underestimate.
When Kyle discovered that Max, whom he kept under full surveillance, had targeted Burlington, Vermont, on his car’s GPS, a car whose systems he had already invaded, he spontaneously decided to create a software malfunction that would force Max to stay there longer.
He had an intuition that if two such singular mutants were in proximity, they might unconsciously sense each other and end up at the right time and place to meet. I had been too grief-stricken and shocked to do anything more than listen, but I finally had to say something when I realized he had set up a meeting between Tommy 2 and what was likely another genetically engineered psychopath. It also dawned on me that this probably explained the nighttime paranormal experience I’d had, which felt upstream in time. The other boy whom I sensed in the hot tub with Tommy 2 must be Max.
“You . . . put another Vaughn-created mutant in his path?”
Kyle registered the horror in my voice and rushed to give me what he thought of as reassurances.
Max didn’t have the so-called “Warrior Gene” most associated with psychopathy, and there were so many divergent epigenetic factors—he was raised in an actual family, spent his early years in another country, and, Kyle added, Max was by no means the physical alpha that he, Kyle, was, as if knowing that the real alpha GMO could take him in a fight was what I was waiting to hear. The only part of the conversation I remember distinctly enough to record came at the end.
“Don’t worry, Tommy, I have enough surveillance to know that they are treating each other really well. In fact, I happen to know they have become lovers. Another reason I felt I had to share this news now is that although choosing candidates for our space-faring biosphere is your department, I’m sure you’ll agree that they should be at the top of the list.”
I staggered back to share the news with Andrew. I was trembling and weeping, and he was wise enough not to ask what had happened but just held me. Later, I realized that this was the moment when our core bond regained its hold.
Sixteen years ago, I had been sent into the past, landing in the red desert near Andrew and the Mothership. It was a bittersweet reunion because Jeremiah, the oldest version of me, had sacrificed himself in the Lower Astral to save Andrew.
Andrew stopped himself from saying it, but I knew he believed the sacrifice might also have been necessary because two versions of the same person couldn’t meet. The sequence of events, and perhaps time-traveler lore, had led him to that conclusion, but when I felt my way into the telepathic link that naturally arose between me and Tommy 2, an inevitable sympathetic resonance between two nearly identical versions who didn’t diverge much until the prevention of the Whip, I came to a different conclusion—two versions of the same person could meet, but shouldn’t.
A day later, I recovered enough from my shock and grief to discuss the problems with Andrew.
“I think it would be disastrous for me and Tommy 2 to meet. He’s just suffered a terrible tragedy and is probably still in shock. I would be another shock, and it could derail his development. Living in the same community with me would drastically interfere with his chance to find his own way and identity.
“My presence, especially in my current damaged state, would be terrible for him. But I also can’t leave him off the life raft—he certainly deserves to be on it. And I can’t sacrifice my place because I’m needed to help pull the community together.”
“Tommy,” says Andrew in a reassuring tone, “yes, it’s a crazily anomalous situation, but Tommy 2 is already living out a crazily anomalous situation, and he’s young and adaptable. And I don’t think you’re as damaged as you think you are. Tommy 2 will meet an impeccable warrior-magician form of himself, and he will likely find you an inspiring example of what he could become.
“You’re understandably thinking like a protective parent, but please remember how strong and resilient you were at his age. Think like a fifteen-year-old. Like you, he was able to handle the loss of his whole world. Compared to that, discovering a time-traveler version of himself offering to take him to a new world is not a trauma. I think he’ll find it weird, but really, really cool.
“Jeremiah was an ageless time traveler, and he inspires me to this day. You’ve already said that the telepathic link with you probably acts as a catalyst accelerating his metamorphosis. Having you actually in his life might be an incredible developmental blessing.
“You also told me that growing up, besides your mom, you had only the most distant relatives you never met. You’re the closest thing to family he’ll ever have, and you know his history up till the tragedy in the most intimate detail. You are the only two surviving members of The Friends community. No one could possibly console him as well as you.”
“Well, I hope you’re right, Andrew. But there’s another problem we need to face, which is Tommy 2 meeting you. When I was his age, I had just encountered you at the treehouse, and though I didn’t quite admit it to myself at the time, I was desperately in love with you, hoping to find you one day. Tommy 2 will have his wish fulfilled, but in a shockingly disappointing way. He’s not going to find another kid his age, but someone in their thirties who is already taken, by me. He may resent both of us.”
“I don’t think either of you is prone to resentment,” Andrew replies. “Like you, he met me when we were both fifteen. And you recognized that we were not living in the same time—you saw that the accident had happened in winter while the treehouse was in high summer. Yes, he recognized me as a fateful soulmate, but it was also a case of a fifteen-year-old virgin forming a crush on another fifteen-year-old virgin. When he discovers I’m in my thirties, I’ll be like a teen idol who just put on a hundred pounds. Disappointing for sure, but those feelings may have already attached to Max, an actual young mutant and almost certainly engineered to have an idealized appearance.
“I think he’ll adapt to the new reality and will probably be even more enthusiastic than you are about being invited into a new community, on a tropical island, no less. And, once again, unlike you, he has a boyfriend—one who saved his life and is eighteen. That might be a hero-worship setup.
“Kyle said they were treating each other well, and you told me that at this phase of your relationship he’s always honest. Why would he deceive you about that when he knows you’re an empath and would quickly detect if anything were amiss?”
“Because Kyle might not know if anything were amiss. He said he had only limited surveillance. I know what I was like at that age—a chronic people-pleaser. Given that Max saved his life, he would no doubt feel he owed him everything. I felt that way about Kyle after he seemingly saved me from a lifter robot that had gone haywire. Only later did I realize that he probably set that up. And even if Kyle could monitor them by video, he still might not detect anything amiss, because Tommy 2 would feel that he should act as if everything were great. When I had that upstream-in-time vision, I sensed waves of conflict between them. Still, it felt civil, with no potential for violence and no harm intended.
“Though Max may not have the same psychopathy genetics as Kyle, I doubt Vaughn would have had him engineered to be an altruistic empath. He would have designed him to have an insane IQ, ideal appearance, and probably some degree of ruthlessness. Very likely he has manipulated Tommy 2 into a sexual relationship.”
“You’re overdoing the fifteen-year-old thing, Andrew. At fifteen I was in love with you, but I was not the sort to form a crush on a fifteen-year-old GMO, no matter how ideal their appearance. I was looking for a soulful relationship with you, and yes, you did have a very pretty face, but remember I found you with your flesh charred in the accident. Not to mention you were in an etheric body—so no teenage pheromones or whatever were being exchanged. I had a crush, if you really want to call it that, because I felt I was being truly seen for the first time. My sexuality was unformed, and I was not primed to fall in love with the first pretty boy I saw. If those same all-knowing eyes were peering out at me from a female body, I would likely have had the same feelings.
“That they are lovers doesn’t mean he’s Tommy 2’s type—at that age I didn’t really have a type. What it does suggest is that Tommy 2 is Max’s type, same as I was for Kyle, and that implies he probably resembles Kyle in all sorts of other ways. We’d have a difficult disclosure problem when we recruit people into our community. Also, besides having to explain why we look like teenagers but have vastly more life experience, we’d have to explain two near-identical-looking people of different actual ages.”
“Well, Tommy, except for your last point, this is all fearful conjecture. We should start by giving Max and this new relationship the benefit of the doubt. If it’s exploitative in any way, we’ll put a stop to it, and Tommy 2 will be grateful for that.
“They are both young, with a year’s less age difference as you and Kyle. Perhaps the attraction is based on them both being such anomalous mutants. Maybe Max also has a fluid and not fully formed eros, and given Tommy 2’s beauty, he’d appeal to a variety of sexual orientations.
“But listen, Tommy, if anything is wrong between them, then we can try to delicately intervene when they get here. And the two identical-looking people thing is just another item on a long list of disclosure issues we have to sort through.”
“OK, you could be right, or partly right, Andrew. Max actually did save his life, so he deserves our care and respect for that reason alone. But what if he’s a power control freak like Kyle? He could be highly disruptive to our community. We’re already going to have Kyle on ice aboard the ship waiting to be reanimated when we get to a habitable planet. My hope is that our community will be strong enough by then that Kyle can’t just take it over. But now he may find another master manipulator who already knows the strengths and weaknesses of everybody on board and is much older than him at that point. Vaughn was a CEO, the professional type that ranks highest in psychopathy, so I’m sure Max was designed to be a CEO type too. We could have a battle of the GMO-CEOs on our hands.”
Andrew laughs.
“C’mon, Tommy, a battle of GMO-CEOs sounds like the worst movie premise of all time. It would have to be a series at least—I’m trying to think of the elevator pitch—Game of Thrones meets Dune—an off-planet battle between GMO-CEOs with the future of mankind at stake.”
The tension breaks, and I can’t keep from laughing along with him.
“And why would Kyle want Max included if he thought he could be competition? Genetic engineering can’t be that exact when it comes to personality. For all we know, Max’s ambition may be to become the greatest watercolor painter in the galaxy.
“You’re worrying about things that are soooo far off in time and literally in outer space. Think of all the unlikely things that would have to go right before we’d have to worry about what happens when Kyle is supposedly brought out of suspended animation on another planet.
“But seriously, Tommy, of course there are going to be epic problems—what else is new? We’re all living anomalous lives, so we’ll just keep adapting to all the weirdness that fate throws at us one day at a time.
“Remember what you told me outside the El Pais Motel sixteen years ago?”
Andrew pauses to gaze deeply into my eyes, envitalizing our telepathic link.
“Tommy, we’ll figure it out.”
