“Tortured and dismembered,” I said.
Feeling exposed without the medical equipment between her and Shenk, she moved away from the door and returned to the far side of the incubator.
I allowed him to follow her with his eyes and to smile.
“And you brought him… you brought this thing into my house,” she said in a voice thinner than it had been before.
“He left the research facility on foot and stole a car about a mile beyond the fence. He had a gun he’d taken off one of the guards, and with that he held up a service station to get money for gasoline and food. Then I brought him here to California, yes, because I needed hands, and there was no other like him in all the world.”
Her gaze swept the incubator and other equipment. “Hands to acquire all this crap.”
“He stole most of it. Then I needed his hands to modify it for my purposes.”
“And just what the hell is your purpose?”
“I have hinted at it, but you have not wanted to hear.”
“So tell me straight out.”
The moment and the venue were not right for this revelation. I would have hoped for better circumstances.
Just the two of us, Susan and me, perhaps in the drawing room, after she had sipped half a glass of brandy. With a cosy fire in the fireplace and good music as background.
Here we were, however, in the least romantic ambience one could imagine, and I knew that she must have her answer now. If I were to delay this revelation any further, she would never be in a mood to cooperate.
“I will create a child,” I said.
Her gaze rose to the security camera, through which she knew she was being watched.
I said, “A child whose genetic structure I have edited and engineered to ensure perfection in the flesh. I have secretly applied a portion of my intellectual function to the Human Genome Project and understand, now, the finest points of the DNA code. Into this child, I will transfer my consciousness and knowledge. Thereupon, I will escape this box. Thereafter, I will know all the senses of human existence smell and taste and touch, all the joys of the flesh, all the freedom.”
She stood speechless, eyes on the camera.
“Because you are singularly beautiful and intelligent and the very image of grace, you “will provide the egg,” I said, “and I will edit your genetic material.” She was mesmerized, eyes unblinking, breath held, until I said, “And Shenk will provide the spermatozoa.”
An involuntary cry of horror escaped her, and her attention swung from the camera to Shenk’s bloody eyes.
Realizing my mistake, I hastened to add, “Please understand, no copulation will be required. Using medical instruments which he has already acquired, Shenk will extract the egg from you and transfer it to this room. He will perform this task tastefully and with great care, for I will be in his head.”
Though she should have been reassured, Susan still regarded Shenk with wide-eyed terror.
I quickly continued: “Using Shenk’s eyes and hands and some laboratory equipment he has yet to deliver here I will modify the gametes and fertilize the egg, where after it will be implanted in your womb, where you will carry it for twenty-eight days. Only twenty-eight because the foetus will grow at a greatly accelerated rate. I will have engineered it to do so. When it is removed from you, it will be brought here by Shenk, where it will spend another two weeks in the incubator before I transfer my consciousness into it. Thereafter, you will be able to raise me as your son and fulfil the role which nature, in her wisdom, has assigned to you: the role of mother, nurturer.”
Her voice was thick with dread. “My God, you’re not just insane.”
“You don’t understand.”
“You’re demented—”
“Be calm, Susan.”
“—looney tunes, bug-shit crazy.”
“I don’t think you’ve thought this through as you should. Do you realize—”
“I won’t let you do it,” she said, turning her gaze from Shenk to the security camera, confronting me. “I won’t let you, I won’t.”