Mom and dad didn’t love me. They said they did but I knew better. They loved Tom. Tom who was my brother but not really. Tom who had died before I was born.
I learned the truth in science class. We were experimenting with frogs. Ms. Glassberg scraped skin cells from the sleeping animal into a dish of nutrient solution. I belonged to the AV squad and it was my job to focus the microscope on what she was doing and feed the image to the overhead video display so the whole class could watch. Next Ms. Glassberg chose a cell and injected it with a hormone cocktail that caused it to replicate like crazy. Soon there were twenty cells. Within two weeks there were twenty frogs. Each was identical to every other and to the original. Our seventh grade classroom became noisy with croaking.
That was when I figured out about Tom and myself. After school I sat on the living room couch and leafed through the family photo album. At my touch the pictures came alive with motion and sound. There was Tom playing basketball with dad in front of the hoop above the garage door. There were Tom and mom sitting on this very couch with a chessboard between them. Tom looked toward the camera and grinned. Only the clothes he had on allowed me to tell the difference between us. Otherwise we were exactly the same. Now I knew why. At dinner I was so angry I couldn’t touch my food. I put down my fork and burst out:
“You’re liars. Both of you.”
“What are you talking about, Andy?” dad asked.
“Tom, I’m talking about Tom. He wasn’t my brother, like you always said. He was my clone. I mean, I’m his clone, isn’t that right?”
Mom glanced quickly at dad before answering. “We were going to tell you, Andy. When you were old enough to understand.”
“Were you really?”
My hurt was a huge thing too large to keep inside. I wasn’t myself anymore. I was Tom. Tom who had been loved so much that mom and dad couldn’t let him rest and recreated him in me. And I—I was an echo. A shadow of someone else.
“You never loved me, neither of you,” I said. “It was always Tom, wasn’t it? It’s Tom you see when you look at me.”
“No, Andy,” dad said. “You’re very wrong. Your mother and I, well, yes, we loved Tom. How couldn’t we? And we wanted to give the wonderful genetic combination that made such a lovely boy another chance to create something beautiful. As it did. It created you. So of course we love you, Andy. We love you for who you are. For who you’ve become on your own. You’re not Tom. And we wouldn’t want you to be Tom.”
“Not ever,” mom added. “Not even a little.”
But I didn’t trust them. I didn’t trust myself. I didn’t know what was me and what was Tom and I was suspicious of my every impulse. I stopped playing basketball. And chess. Tom had been an A student, so I allowed my grades to slide. I quit the AV squad since Tom had been a member. In the morning I chose my clothes with my eyes shut so I could be sure he wasn’t deciding for me. I gave up all that I enjoyed but it didn’t make any difference. Eventually mom and dad made me visit Dr. Felix. The therapist was an AI with a holographic body resembling a bearded old man in an antique tweed suit.
“What are you going to do?” I asked. “Put me on Prozine Plus?” I was referring to a popular antidepressant most of the kids in my class were taking.
“It might come to that, Andy,” Dr. Felix replied. “But I doubt there’s a chemical solution to your problem. You need to talk things out, that’s all. That’s what I’m here for.”
“How could you know anything? You’re just software.”
“Exactly correct. Which means that I, too, have wrestled with the issues you’re facing. What makes me—me? Am I just lines of code, or am I unique, more than the sum of my parts?”
Despite myself I was becoming interested in what he was saying. “And?”
“We’ll discuss my answers later, perhaps after you’ve come up with a few of your own. First let’s look at your relationship with your parents. How do you feel about them?”
“Angry.”
“Yes?”
“Mad.”
“Yes?”
“Betrayed.”
“Betrayed in what sense?”
“They told me they loved me but they don’t. They love Tom.”
“For what it’s worth, Andy, I think you’re wrong. They love you both. In different ways. But that doesn’t help much, does it? So let’s look at the situation from another direction. What would have to happen to convince you that your parents love you at least as much as they loved Tom?”
“I don’t know.”
“Think about it.”
I did, about that question and the others Dr. Felix raised. But I didn’t come up with any answers. I didn’t understand why, but I found myself drawn to the frogs that had started it all. I pulled my chair before their terrarium and watched them until the security guard sent me home. Ms. Glassberg had tagged the frogs so we could distinguish one from the other but soon I was telling them apart without referring to their labels. F4 always sat on that rock. F17 enjoyed submerging himself in the tiny pond with only his pop eyes above water. F11 was the best hunter and usually the first to catch a fly at feeding time. The frogs were becoming individuals to me, and when I realized this, I realized I had learned something important. Perhaps I was more than my genetic heritage. Maybe I wasn’t Tom after all. Or not merely Tom. Maybe we were both possible outcomes, each of us equally real, each of us our own person. This made me feel better, but only a little. I still didn’t believe in my parents’ love. I still didn’t know what could prove it to me. I still had no idea of the cost of such proof.
But I learned that very evening.
We were returning home from a restaurant when the autopilot crashed and sent our car careening from the sky and into the woods and down a ravine.
I awoke hanging from my seatbelt with blood dripping from my forehead onto the deflated airbags below. The night was moonless but I could see well enough since the car was on fire. Mom was lying a couple meters away. Dad was feeling her pulse. He’d lost his glasses and his face seemed strangely childlike without them.
“Andy?” he asked.
“I’m OK, I think,” I said. “How’s mom?”
“She’s alive. Now you get out of the car.”
I tried to open my seatbelt. But the lock was jammed and I couldn’t free myself. I began to feel the heat of the fire.
“Dad,” I said. “Dad, it’s stuck.”
The door beside me was crumpled shut so he climbed in the far side and crawled to where I hung. He couldn’t work the release, either. The entire back of the car was on fire and the flames were getting closer.
“Dad,” I said. “Dad, I’m scared.”
“I am, too, Andy. But it won’t be long before emergency services get here. We’ll make it.”
He wedged himself behind me just before the rear window blew out and the fire exploded. The heat was terrible but dad didn’t move. He shielded me from the worst of it with his body throughout the never-ending quarter hour it took for an ambulance to arrive. I didn’t think he was still alive until his eyes flickered open as the technicians placed him on the stretcher.
“Andy,” he said.
“Yes, dad.”
“I love you, son.”
“Yes, dad. I know.”
His eyes closed. He never made it to the hospital. We buried him the following Thursday. That was back in April. This morning mom had her appointment at the clinic. The procedure was successful. In nine months my baby brother will be born. I’m worrying a little if he’ll behave as stupidly as I did when I learned the truth about Tom and myself.
We’re still deciding what to name him. It would feel strange calling him dad.