“Why am I supposed to believe you?” she said. Her breath was short, and she gripped the arms of the chair. She looked at the vial of green liquid in her free hand. There was a small skull and crossbones sticker affixed to it.
“You must decide for yourself,” he said, hanging his head. “But his genes are unstable. He is growing more powerful and erratic every minute.”
“What does this have to do with me?” Anne said.
“You’re the only one who can get close enough to him. He trusts you. Because I trust you.”
Anne decided she didn’t care who was the real Arthur and who was the fake. What if the cloning process had made the new Arthur possess a higher concentration of essential Arthurness? Could he be even more Arthur than Arthur? And in that case, how could you say which Arthur was real? It wasn’t a question she was ready to handle.
And yet, despite everything, she didn’t want Roberta to get hurt.
“I’ve always said it’s the clothes that make the man,” Arthur was saying to Roberta as Anne walked into the room. She was walking slowly, but her heart was beating very fast.
Arthur had Roberta’s hand in his, and he slid one of her fingers into his mouth and bit down.
“Ouch!” Roberta said with a giggle. Her finger was bleeding a little bit. “You scoundrel.”
When Arthur saw Anne, his eyes narrowed. “Where have you been?” he demanded.
Anne waved one hand toward another part of the apartment. In the other, she hid the vial in a fist. “I need to talk to Roberta,” she said.
Anne and Arthur exchanged looks and laughed together, but Roberta came anyway. Anne took Roberta out onto the balcony and slid the glass door shut.
“Did you see Jerome and Chiara Dopp?” Roberta said. “I told you that simply everybody who’s anybody would be here. Aren’t you glad we came?”
Roberta’s words were slurred, and her eyes seemed to be swimming around in her skull. Anne’s head was swimming too.
“Listen, have you noticed anything strange about Arthur? He doesn’t seem quite like his usual self, right?”
Roberta groaned.
“Can’t we talk about something else? Arthur is a free man. He can do whatever he wants.”
“But doesn’t he seem more, I don’t know, aggressive?”
“That’s it,” Roberta said, “I’m getting another drink.”
Anne could see the Arthur in the butler suit looking at her from across the room. His eyes were pleading, and he was making frantic gestures. The other Arthur had his arms around both Roberta and Anne now.
Why was this Anne’s decision to make? She was drunk and tired and sick of everyone and everything. She just wanted to go home and sleep a peaceful sleep in her own bed.
“If only I could keep both of you here for myself!” Arthur in the blue suit said.
Anne pretended to laugh. Roberta was laughing too, but shot Anne a nasty look.
“Maybe Anne can go freshen your drink,” Roberta offered. “So we can talk alone.”
Anne took the empty glass and huffed off to the bar.
Arthur’s body twitched on the Oriental rug for quite some time.
It was late in the night, and the few remaining guests were standing aghast around the foyer. Anne was starting to sober up.
“Oh god. Oh god,” she muttered. The empty vial slipped out of her hand and clinked on the tiles. How would she know if she killed the right one?
Roberta came bolting in from the kitchen.
“If you couldn’t have him, nobody could. Is that it? You’ve never been happy for me, not once in my whole life!” Roberta started to cry. “There were two of them. We could have worked something out.”
The remaining Arthur knelt down beside the body and solemnly slid down the eyelids.
He stood up and looked at Anne. Roberta stared at Anne and pulled out her cell phone, threatening to call the police. The thunder rumbled softly in the distance. The three of them stood over the body, the seconds doubling and doubling as they tried to anticipate what would happen next.
MEGAFAUNA
WHAT WE HAVE SURMISED ABOUT THE JOHN ADAMS INCARNATION
Although much remains unclear about John Adams (alternatively referred to in recovered documents as Jon Adam, John Adems, and the Adams Abomination), recent drone expeditions into the Charred Continent have unearthed new artifacts that lead us closer to understanding this mysterious entity.
Long assumed to be a prince or demon of a lesser cult, we now know that John Adams was an important figure in the dominant United Statsian mythology. He appears to have originally been conceived as a familiar or minion of George Washington, the first of the hundred tyrants that are said to have ruled the country until its infamous, self-inflicted demise. It was only later that John Adams was celebrated as a deity in his own right. His physical manifestation is a source of debate. Certain scholars suggest he was worshipped as an enormous, goat-like god or perhaps a sentient birch tree — referred to as the Braintree — by the Cults of Puritan that populated the region now known as the Twice-Damned Seaboard. Often he is portrayed as a fat, sullen man, whose lips seem curled in a perpetual frown.
As the second of the early tyrants — likely monarchs who were worshipped as divine, although possibly purely mythological figures — John Adams can be placed squarely in what may be called the “Constitutional Pantheon” of the United Statsian religion. His chief rivals in this group were Alexander “the Uncrowned” Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson, the latter of whom would usurp his throne. It is believed that Adams’s symbols were the split acorn, the horned hair, and the first feather of the newborn eagle.
The acolytes of Adams do not appear to have had as much influence as the followers of more prominent gods, such as Benjamin Franklin, Lincoln of the Logs, or the Great Traitor Burr (a title that was perhaps ironic given his apparent influence among the Southern lands). Of all the sacred coins and wood pulp currency sheets that have been unearthed from the burnt rubble, none have featured the visage of John Adams — a fact that is rather unusual among the early tyrants.
Here it must be noted that many scholars now believe these beings were not necessarily viewed as separate by the United Statsians, but rather different incarnations of the one “founding father” deity, also known as George Washington — the first incarnation — Uncle Sam, or the First and the Last, the Truth and the Lie. The Founding Father, in this conception, was a shape-shifting and eternal god believed to have formed the nation by tearing apart fragments of the gigantic Life Tree with his “teeth of wood” and regurgitating fifty large bark chunks into the sea to form the collected states.
In his fleeting incarnation as John Adams, the Founding Father was pale, bloated, and quick to anger. His commandments were enforced by a set of terrifying minions known only as the Midnight Judges. Scholars agree that this was a tumultuous time for early United Statsian society, as the wars with rival nations such as Imperial France and Britain of the First Decay had taken their tolls on the populace. The newly formed United States was working to define itself and struggling with enemies both within and without. The monstrous John Adams incarnation likely provided a feeling of strength and destiny to the huddled and starving United Statsians.
Although harsh in demeanor and despised among the citizenry, the John Adams incarnation is given credit for defeating the rival gods of Imperial France — almost certainly symbolic of an actual conflict known mysteriously as the Quasi War — in a grand battle that raged “atop the purple mountains and shining seas” for twelve cycles before John Adams emerged bloodied and tired, yet victorious.