Free Join by Steve Toutonghi Page B

table.
    â€œOh, okay.” says Leap One. Chance notices that Leap Two, in her nightgown of yellow cotton, is leaning against the threshold to the kitchen. Leap Three, a tall, rangy man in his late thirties, is standing behind her. “You’re not going to get into it,” Leap One says, drawing Chance’s attention back to him, “because you don’t believe I’ll understand it.”
    â€œNo,” Chance says, “it’s not that.”
    â€œIt’s not?”
    â€œNo! We just don’t have time.”
    â€œYou think I wouldn’t understand,” says Leap One, bitterly. Chance is struck again by how alien Leap seems, how unlike her old friend. As if reading her mind, Leap Two takes a step into the kitchen and says, “As for time, that’s all we have. We’re right here, in my house. And because of that storm and your little incident while we were flying through it, we probably won’t have another flight for at least a couple of days. Chance, you might not have any more flights at all. You’re worried about Rope, but after our flight today, you should be worried about your job.”
    â€œHe’s out there, Leap! He’s out there, and now you—and this house—have popped up on his radar!”
    Leap Two speaks slowly, enunciating each word. “No. No. No. He. Is. Not. Coming. Here. Chance.”
    Chance’s fingers are cold. She wants to close her eyes. Leap’s anger, combined with a sense of injustice that Chance hasn’t felt from Leap before, seems aimed at her. It’s like she’s talking to a stranger. Chance Two says, “Why do you have three drives in the kitchen right now?”
    Leap Two gestures at herself and Leap Three. “These two are hungry.”
    The quiet sound of footfalls. Chance turns back to Leap One as Leap Four enters the room behind him. Leap Four is a young Japanese woman with hair dyed the color of rust. Squat, powerfully built, with a broad, thoughtful face.
    â€œYou’re all here,” Chance says.
    Leap Four says, “It’s my home.”
    Then, in unison, as if in a scene from a vidcom or a nightmare, all four Leaps convulse at the same time. Their upper lips rise. Their shoulders jump. They pant loudly. Then all four are looking at Chance as if nothing has happened.

    The trial of one thousand was the first public demonstration of Join. Five hundred pairs of prequalified volunteers were chosen by lottery to become five hundred individuals. It was a sensation. Despite the emergence of megastorms and indisputable new evidence of an imminent catastrophic rise in water levels, those five hundred new individuals and their “I am both of us!” campaign dominated international news for months. The public was transfixed. “Would you?” seemed the only relevant conversational gambit.
    There were also immediate questions about which agencies could regulate Join. The government’s positions were weakened by the debate about what Join was and what it meant and by a fragmented international response. Vitalcorp had also recruited influential investors. In the end, despite committed resistance, the public’s enthusiasm for the sheer audacity of the product proved decisive. Only a year after the last couple in the one thousand became a single individual, Join was approved for, and released to, the general market.
    In that initial release, Vitalcorp included a prohibition against a join of more than two, with exceptions allowed for research. The process had been discovered almost by mistake. Vitalcorp wanted to introduce it in stages. But people petitioned for exceptions and squeezed into rapidly proliferating studies. Within a few years, the largest legal join was Excellence, the CEO of Vitalcorp, who was a twelve. (Excellence also set the tradition for naming joins.)
    Since then, the science has progressed. While Vitalcorp discourages large joins through its fee