Mercury - Part 2

Part 2 – Strained Introductions

EXPERIMENT 194: 22/12/2024

(Two figures sit across from each other at the table. One is a middle-aged man, the other is a snow leopard recom of age six, wearing a pair of white gloves and is distractedly tracing figures on the table with a finger)

RESEARCH ASSISTANT: "Hello, Mercury, I'd like to review what you remember from the slides we showed you earlier."
MERCURY: "Okay."
RA: "On slide 3, what did you remember seeing?"
M: "It was a picture of Mars."
RA: "Are you sure?"
M: "Yeah. He was holding his hand out to me. I was going to get into the screen and dance with him-
RA: "It."
M: "It. But then you moved to slide 4. I have my gloves on, see? I could have danced with him for hours and hours."
RA: "Mercury, I appreciate that you have an imagination, but this is serious. What did you see?"
M: "Why does it matter? Check it yourself."
RA: "We're testing your memory."
M: "Test yours. What was on slide 3?"
RA: "I'm not here to play games with you, Mercury."
M: "That's sad."
RA: "You know that you already have one approval for euthanasia."
(A long silence passes, M and RA stare at each other)
M: "Replay the video. Watch my hands. I'll wait."
(The video ends here. If replayed, the motion of Mercury's hands trace out a series of simple symbols, traced out in the same way as on slide 3, shown three days prior.)

***

I couldn't tear my eyes away from Mercury's face, but I shook off this feeling of familiarity, reminding myself that this could not be the Mercury from the experiments.  It's been almost two hundred years since all that stuff went down. I didn't know the details, only that Samara was genetically identical to Mercury. It's possible that it was a clone made from genetic material inherited by the family, since they were descendents of the 01MER line. Farfetched, but it was not as farfetched as the person in my doorway being centuries old.

"Stop staring, Racer," said Sam's demanding, childlike voice, almost musical yet unsettling, "and invite me in. We haven't got all month to talk about this."

"Ah, sorry. Rude of me. Come on in, have a seat, we'll chat some business." I gestured towards one of my couches, but Sam just stood there with a crinkled nose.

"Don't you ever feel compelled to clean your apartment? It's filthy and disorganized," said the snow leopard recom, "Are you really expecting to have our talk here?"

"No, of course not. Come on in, I have a room set aside to talk to you in." After all, I wanted to have the discussion now, and not after several hours while I let Samara, an obsessive-compulsive neat-freak by all reports, clean my apartment. I chuckled softly to myself (the thought of this young mercenary doing my housework just struck me as funny) on the way back to my study. It was cleared out of anything but two simple, angular chairs, facing each other, exactly parallel to the walls, reminiscent of the way some of the Mercury experiments were set up.

Sam followed me into the room, and I thought I briefly saw something in that face. A pang of discomfort, perhaps? But as soon as it appeared, it was gone, replaced by that standard scowling expression. While I knew it was unlikely that Sam was disapproving all the time, the facial expression was pretty unsettling. "So you called me in here to talk to me about the Olne job, right? If not, I'm out of here."

It was bewildering having someone talk to me like that. I was well-respected, well-connected, the best of the best. I furrowed my brows and said, "Wait a second, don't disrespect me so much. There's always room for fun and games, but have you considered what a huge opportunity this is? For you? Me, I had my pick of the pile, and your name happened to come up."

"Is it the Olne job?"

I didn't really know how Samara knew who was involved in the job. Probably because Rusty attracted all kinds of attention to Errol, so it warranted investigation for types like us. "Yeah, it is. My previous partner became, ah, less interested in the project while investigating the client."

"Yeah. He got shot. I saw it on the news. Rusty sure must be blushing over that amateur mistake. Except for being dead and all," said Sam. While I didn't consider Rusty a friend and merely a work associate, and I agreed that being killed while doing some client investigations was probably an embarrassing mistake, I at least carried some respect for a dead associate, so I couldn't really give Sam any kind of intelligent response.

"Yeah, well, that's why I brought you in here. Olne's got a job for me. I need a partner to pull it off, and it'll be pretty dangerous. Are you in?" I said, getting down to business.

"Just give me all the documents I need to read, and I'll be ready to go in the morning."