I made the turns as instructed by Ford, and the slight slant to the floor told me we were wending our way onto lower levels. Interesting. No stairs or elevators. That meant fewer ways in or out. So maybe Laughlin wasn’t as confident in his hold on his hybrids as he appeared to be. Or perhaps he simply thought of them as more disposable. I shuddered and then caught myself, hopefully before any of the surely numerous cameras picked up on it.
As we rounded the final corner, I noticed a sign hung flush against the wall, just above my line of sight.
GALLERY
SERIES 7.11.19
The tidy white font on the black background reminded me of the signs I’d seen for museum exhibits on television and in movies. (I’d never been to one in real life; there’d been an eighth grade field trip to the Field Museum, but I hadn’t gone of course. I had asked, though, because I’d thought it might be allowed under my directive of “know the humans so you can better imitate one.” Now I had to wonder how much of my father’s refusal had to do with the perennial obligation of being unnoticed and how much to do with the fact that the museum was, perhaps, a little too near Laughlin’s territory.)
Honestly, I expected nothing more from the gallery than a collection of the same drab photographs and prints that had decorated the previous corridors.
So I didn’t understand what I was looking at, at first. The initial display appeared to be some kind of modern art statement piece, a glass box—seemingly empty but for a tiny dot in the center of it—set into the wall with a small black-and-white sign beneath it.
It wasn’t until after three or four identical displays that the object in the box became large enough for me to recognize familiar features, for me to understand what I was looking at.
Large, dark eyes set behind translucent lids in a pale, delicate head. Tiny hands that looked more like flippers. A body no larger than my fist, curled in on itself, floating in an eternal sea of preservative.
And beneath it, on that neat black-and-white sign, a name: QUINCY ADAMS.
The name of a former president. These were Nixon, Ford, and Carter’s predecessors on display.
My stomach revolted, and I gagged.
Carter stepped on my heels before I realized I’d slowed down to stare. “You can’t stop. We can’t stop,” he hissed in my ear.
Oh God. He was right. Ford wouldn’t stop. Because she was steeled against this horrific display; she’d have to be. She’d seen it every day for years.
I forced my sluggish legs to move, commanded my knees to bend and lift my feet. I’m sure if anyone were watching closely enough, they would have seen Ford moving as though there were strings attached to her arms and legs. Jerky, puppetlike. But I was moving. And that was the best I could do.
Especially as the “gallery” only got worse.
As the series progressed, as the names grew closer to the living Laughlin hybrids I knew, the specimens appeared to grow, in a mockery of the development of the living beings they’d once been. Signs of “progress” in Laughlin’s process, obviously.
Until, finally, I was looking at full-fledged children. Not infants who might have perished before birth from some unspecified developmental flaw. No, these were boys and girls, some taller than others, some thinner and less human looking. All them, though, had the same pale and fine hair I struggled with on a daily basis. Short, long, wavy, straight, and every state in between, it hung in clouds around their heads, above their sightless eyes, floating gently like seaweed on the current. Probably thanks to the filtration system that kept them preserved and on display.
It was horrific. The exact fate I’d feared for the source of the alien DNA we all shared, the one who’d crash-landed here on Earth in 1947. I’d never dreamed…I’d never imagined someone would do this to us. I felt a kinship to these silent and lost souls just as much as their living counterparts. Yes, some of them, had they survived, might have wanted me dead (as Ford might still); some might have even tried to kill me during the trials. But that didn’t change what we were to each other.
In the displays that contained the more advanced hybrids, metal tools lined the inside of the tank and a see-through plastic flap covered a drawer beneath, where scientists could presumably reach through and collect their bits and pieces of flesh.
My vulnerable siblings, half brothers and sisters, had no peace even in death. They would be stared at, studied, and sampled.
One of the Roosevelts, the first one, T. Roosevelt, looked like a tiny, perfect doll. Five or six years old. The same age I’d been when I’d “escaped” with my father. Even in just the quick glimpse I had of her, she reminded me of me. And the daughter I would never have. (I wasn’t sure it was even possible, and even if it was, who knew what the genetic tinkering they’d done on me would result in?)
I wondered if they’d called her “T” or “Roosevelt” or nothing at all.
It was a waste. Such a waste.
Despite my extensive education in world religions and the various wars and conflict they were supposedly responsible for launching, I’d never reached a conclusion on my own opinion about souls or an afterlife. But I figured this display said more about the postdeath fate of those who’d created it rather than those who were in it. I prayed my fellow hybrids were long gone and, at the very least, feeling nothing at all anymore.
I opened my eyes wide to hold in the tears that threatened to spill down my cheeks.
Far be it from me to be thankful to Dr. Jacobs for anything, including my existence, but at least I wasn’t part of something like this grotesque collection.
Then again, for all I knew maybe Jacobs had a gallery somewhere in GTX that I had just never seen. But I doubted it. This wasn’t his style. He was determined, vicious, and uncaring in his pursuit of his goals. Cruel, oh yes. But with purpose. Not that that made it better, but somehow cruelty without purpose, like creating this gallery, like making the surviving hybrids pass it daily, seemed worse.
This reeked of arrogance, self-indulgence, and a twisted mind.
As the wall curved ahead of us, I could see the final displays. Thank God. Although I had to wonder if something worse lay ahead, since no one, not even Carter, had mentioned this monstrous memorial to me in preparation for this trip.
The last hybrid name I recognized, not just from human history but from Ford herself.
Johnson had been a girl, taller and stockier than Ford and me. Unlike the others, she appeared to be staring somewhere off to the left. Her neck was twisted at a strange angle that someone had tried to correct, not quite successfully.
According to the tiny plaques beneath the boxes, all of those prior to Johnson had died of “system failure.” Multiple organs giving up at once, for no known reason. In my research back in Wingate, I’d learned that genetic hybrids and animal clones created in human laboratories often suffered this fate.
But Johnson had been “eliminated” when she couldn’t fit in with Mara’s cultural indoctrination suggestions. Dr. Laughlin had taken away her dose of Quorosene, and she’d died. Slowly, horribly, according to Ford and the others.
Looking at Johnson’s obviously broken neck, though, I wondered if someone had stepped up and put her out of the misery in the end. Killing her even though they’d all feel that death. Someone more than a sister, an extension of themselves.
Ford. I’d have bet money on it.
I couldn’t imagine doing that.
Johnson had once been part of Ford, Carter, and Nixon’s minds, and she part of theirs. She was represented by the line on Ford’s face. On my face now, too—a temporary mark, thanks to Ford’s adept hand with a pen.