Free Year Zero by Jeff Long Page A

in alien contagions.
    He shut down the line of inquiry. Back to Chairman of the Boxes. Boxes within boxes within boxes. “For now,” he said, “I don’t want you working with animals.”
    “I hear your concern about this outbreak,” she said. “But Winston is separate. He’s not a problem.”
    “He may be separate, but he is similar,” her father said. “Like viruses, he constitutes a kingdom unknown. We don’t know what he is, therefore he is a danger. I won’t argue.”
    “There’s something more you need to know,” she blurted out. “About Winston. It’s important.”
    His eyes darted from her to the pond. Shards of broken ice bobbed on the dark water.
    How to sum it all up? “I boosted his growth,” she said. “In the womb. Winston was born the way you just saw him. Same height. Same weight. He was born fully formed.”
    Ever the reductionist, her father broke the notion into manageable parts. “You grew him to full maturity? Inside a Plexiglas box? Impossible,” he said.
    She skipped on. “I accelerated his development. The trigger was there. I just had to switch it on. That wasn’t the hard part.”
    “What was the hard part then?”
    “Switching the trigger off. Otherwise he would have died of old age a month ago. I had to find a way to stop it at the genetic level.”
    “Miranda,” her father slowly entoned. “You had to find a way to stop what?”
    “Aging. Death.”
    “What?”
    “I found the brake. I built it in.”
    Her father was staring at her. “That can’t be.”
    “Why not?” she said. “Because it’s me that found it?”
    “Because, Miranda,” he said, “it’s not chronological with the research being done. It comes out of nowhere. And yes, because it’s you, an unpublished, unfunded sixteen-year-old girl working in secret by herself. With no assistance, with a few stolen instruments, out of the scientific community’s view, with no guidelines, no oversight.”
    She interrupted. “Dad. Seventeen. For the record. Two weeks ago.”
    His mouth opened and closed. Usually one of his secretaries faked it for him, some roses and a check. She watched his chagrin, a matter of jaw muscles. “If what you say is true,” he said, returning to Winston’s genesis, “you’ve jumped across the entire process.”
    She had jumped their chronology. So what? “There’s nothing mystical about it,” she hurried on. Her ten minutes were nearly up. “It’s as natural as nature. Everyone’s so busy with gene mapping and cloning mice, they haven’t bothered going out into the world to test-drive the code. I did. That’s how I made the real discovery.”
    She had his complete attention now. “You have to see this for yourself,” she said. “We have to go closer.” She hopped down to the next ledge.
    “Get out of there, Miranda. It’s dangerous.”
    “Just a little closer. So he can get a better look at you. Then you’ll see.”
    “You don’t know what it’s capable of.”
    “But I do,” she insisted. “He’s like a miracle. You know the law of unintended consequences. Results you didn’t build for.”
    Something—her conviction, his curiosity—bridged their gap. He took off his trenchcoat, and lowered himself to her ledge. Miranda hopped one lower, and he followed. She didn’t take him all the way to the water. He was close enough.
    Miranda unwrapped the final bundle, another lobster. She skated it on top of the ice a few feet away. “Here, Winston,” she called.
    The monster came. He was a powerful swimmer, and his lime green dorsal ridge cast a small roostertail of water behind him. There was no showing off or fancy dolphin leaps this time. He came to a halt just behind the lobster and heaved his head and shoulders up through the thin ice, facing them.
    Winston’s face was so fantastic that he was either revolting or supremely beautiful. There was no middle ground, no ordinariness by which to judge him. His head was wider than it was high, the nostrils