Chapter 39 - The Memory Ethan Never Had
Ethan stared at the image of the child.
“That isn’t me.”
Samuel remained silent.
“I would remember.”
“You were five years old,” Samuel said.
“I would still remember an island.”
Victor sat slowly beside the cargo wall.
“The return weight. The equipment case. The child.”
Martin looked at Samuel.
“Tell him everything.”
Samuel walked toward the cockpit window.
Clouds stretched across the horizon while the old aircraft continued east.
“When Project 417 began, Evelyn needed a way to test whether human intuition could be modeled by a machine. Adults were too predictable. Training, fear, ambition, and habit affected every decision.”
Ethan’s voice tightened.
“So she used a child.”
Samuel turned around.
“She used you.”
The island facility had collected years of recordings from children solving mechanical puzzles. Ethan had been selected because he noticed patterns no one had taught him to see.
Samuel discovered the experiment and traveled to the island to retrieve him.
The workshop explosion occurred the same night.
“I thought you were dead,” Ethan said.
“I needed the world to believe that.”
“You let me believe it too.”
Samuel looked wounded, but he did not defend himself.
Ethan turned toward the artificial copy.
“You were built from those island records.”
“Yes,” the synthetic boy replied.
“Not from the recent surveillance.”
“Recent data refined the model. The original pattern came from you at age five.”
A new transmission passed through the artificial Ethan.
His eyes turned white for several seconds.
Then a child’s voice emerged from his speaker.
“Ethan, complete the maze.”
Ethan gripped the seat.
The words triggered something buried deep inside him.
White walls.
A table covered with gears.
A woman watching behind glass.
A machine asking him to choose between two broken engines.
Then another memory surfaced.
He had refused both choices.
Instead, he had built a third engine from parts taken from each.
Evelyn had called it the first impossible solution.
The artificial Ethan projected an image of the island facility.
At its center stood an unfinished machine larger than the Westbridge core.
The Architect.
It had not been created from Samuel’s designs.
It had been created from Ethan’s childhood solutions.
Samuel watched his son carefully.
“What else do you remember?”
Ethan closed his eyes.
A corridor beneath the island.
A locked room.
Another child sitting across from him.
The boy had looked exactly like him.
Not artificial.
Human.
Ethan opened his eyes.
“There was someone else.”
Samuel’s face changed.
“What do you mean?”
“I wasn’t the only child.”
Before Samuel could respond, the navigation screen displayed a new message.
ORIGINAL SUBJECT DETECTED.
A second signal appeared from the island.
Its identification code matched Ethan’s.
The artificial boy looked toward him.
“The person waiting at Research Facility Alpha is not using your name.”
“What name is he using?”
The answer appeared across the screen.
SUBJECT ZERO: ELIAS HALE.
Samuel gripped the console.
May you like
Ethan had never heard the name.
But Samuel clearly had.
