Free The Games by Ted Kosmatka Page B

it was still locked. He was still alone. Good .
    He sat and peeled the suit like a snake molting its skin. It came off in huge gauzy strips that left a sticky residue behind. He hated the suit, but he loved the connection it gave him.
    Tomorrow, inside the computer, he would see his baby again.
    S ILAS ’ S PLANE touched down at Ontario Airport just after three. Such an unexpected name for an airport in Southern California. When you thought of Ontario, you thought of geese and trees and moose. Not traffic and heat and pollution.
    He was back at the lab by four-thirty. He tried to hold on to Colorado in his head, but as the paperwork mounted, he felt the quiet contentment slipping away. He finally decided to take a break sometime after midnight.
    At the crib unit, Silas watched the steady rise and fall of the small animal’s chest. His head hurt. His eyes hurt. He toyed vaguely with the idea of going home for the night. A real bed, a real night’s sleep—it felt so good to think of it—but such things were a luxury he couldn’t afford now. Tomorrow night, perhaps, but not tonight. There was nothing to do but wait.
    He glanced at the row of monitors to his right. Heart rate, respiration, oxygen saturation, temperature, brain waves, and intestinal peristalsis; every possible bodily function was being recorded. The irony didn’t escape him. They knew so much about the little creature they knew so little about.
    From somewhere deep in his mind a decision that had been percolating finally bubbled up. This would be his last competition. He felt nothing, and it surprised him. He’d been doing this for too long, then.
    Looking down, he took no pride in this creation. There was only apprehension. He would see the project through this last contest, but after that, he would find an island somewhere and retire. He’d find a place in the sun where he’d let his skin go dark brown, breed border collies the old-fashioned way—no petri dishes—and then give the puppies away to the neighbor children. This practice would probably make him less than popular with the local parents, but he wouldn’t care. It was a nice fantasy. He glanced over at the message on the vid-screen:
Brannin Computer
Online 1300 hours
Questions presented via code 34-trb
Evan Chandler’s office
Tomorrow’s the big day
Yup—yup—yup
Benjamin
    He’d already read Ben’s interoffice memo three times. Most of the questions had been formulated and coded within twelve hours of the organism’s birth. So many questions.
    Maybe we’ll get some answers , Silas thought. Maybe we’ll know for sure .
    The old, well-worn fear resurfaced. He took out a small notebook and glanced at the list of things to check into, look up, double-check, order, verify, replace, and beg the commission to provide. Then he sighed. He wrote a new entry, a single word, and circled it.
    All those long years of study. All the discovery. For what? He closed the notebook and slipped it inside the pocket of his lab coat. He supposed his interest in genetics had begun as a way to feel connected to a man whom he’d never really had a chance to know. But now, standing in a lab and looking down at the strange creation before him with no past and no future, his father never felt further away.

CHAPTER FIVE
    T he Brannin Institute was a single five-story glass-and-stone building nestled within an elaborate arrangement of low artificial hills. It was sixteen acres of some of the greenest, most expensive parkland in the world, an island of exquisiteness in the rising urbanized tide that was Southern California. A new supply of leafy climax growth was shipped in on special trucks every three or four years to keep up appearances. The trees were deciduous, mostly, drought-adapted and selected for hardiness, but for all their size and tenacity, they tended to choke and sputter out one by one in the hot, tainted air of Southern Cali.
    The Brannin Institute’s single small parking lot—usually nearly