MODEL 07

The house was almost too quiet when Clayton came home. He was used to Wanda’s latin flare—the smell of spices and the sound of cumbia ringing on the speaker–but there was nothing but the humming of the fridge.

“Wanda?”

As he walked from the entryway to the kitchen, the sound of his own footsteps accompanied him. With his coat still on, he stood before the marble island where a single white envelope lay in the middle of the countertop.

Written on the envelope was his name in Wanda’s elegant handwriting. Alongside the envelope appeared to be Wanda’s engagement ring and her house keys.

He ripped open the top of the envelope and pulled out a folded piece of paper.

“Mi amor Clayton,

By the time you read this, I will already be gone on the next flight to Spain where I grew up.

This may be a shock to you but I promise to keep this honest.

You always prided yourself in the story of how we first met. You loved watching your Analysts colleagues' grow with warmth as you told them our fairy tale about the day we met at the library. You’d tell them how you opened a rare genealogy registry of the city’s founding families and found my number already written in the margin of the page you opened. You’d describe how it felt like an instant, intimate “spark”. A breathless assurance that your bad luck with love had finally come to an end. You called it fate. Enamorado. You thought your heart chose me.

The truth is, Clay, there is no such thing as fate in your world. You were never meant to find someone at random because your very existence was not random. You weren’t conceived, you weren’t birthed. You were coded, incubated, curated by the Biotech agency. And I am not exactly your fiancé, I am a behavioral technician for Biotech. Four years ago, you were my assignment. We did not meet by accident, Clayton. The phone number was placed in that specific registry because you were designed to search for it. Your coding pulled you to that library, to that shelf, to the book, to my number. Originally, you were programmed to look into the genealogy registry and find the agency. Then, they expected you’d research the founding families history where you’d find Biotech.

As hard as it is to admit this to you Clay, It was my job to pretend to be the woman who completed you, keep you isolated, compliant, and subservient to the program. While doing so, I fell completely and irrevocably in love with you. I did the one thing a technician is never supposed to do. I fell in love with your kindness, and your curiosity. Clayton, I can not bear to hurt you any longer.

You were programmed to discover the Biotech genealogy book. You were made to eventually figure yourself out. But instead, you found my number. I called the agency immediately after hanging up the phone with you. They encouraged me to play into it, and said they would provide me with a higher pay rate. At the time, with mama’s cancer treatment and her mortgage, we were swamped with bills and I couldn’t afford to say no.

Have you never wondered where you came from? Who your parents are? Why you’ve never been invited to a family reunion or never bumped into a cousin ? You didn’t think it was strange that there is no trace of you anywhere? No yearbook? Baby pictures?

If you go to the cella, and walk past the furnace to the crawlspace behind the water heater, there is a floorboard painted with a small red heart. Ábrelo.

Inside, you will find a brown box taped shut. All the medical schematics of your neural architecture, the vials of synthetic chemical blocks I slipped into your coffee every morning, and the official directive from the agency.

If this letter isn’t enough to convince you, and you want to find the truth, you need to look inside the box.

Lo siento mucho, mi amor. Siento haber hecho que te enamoraras de mí. Siento haberte mentido; seas humano o no, mereces saber la verdad.”

The letter slowly fluttered onto the marble island, landing right on top of the house keys.

His heart hammered against his chest as he made his way from the kitchen to the hallway. On the walls hung photos of them, Christmas cards, and the portrait Wanda gifted him on their second anniversary.

Standing in front of the basement door, he took a breath and stepped into the damp, cold aired space. He glanced down the stairs at the washing machine where Wanda’s green cardigan sat folded neatly for a moment before noticing the furnace. As he walked past the furnace, he found a tiny unfinished cutout in the basement wall. He crouched down, ducking his head to crawl into the dirt floored space behind the water heater. With his knees dug deep into the grit, he found the red heart floorboard that Wanda mentioned in her letter.

He pried it open with a ruler he found on a desk nearby and placed the piece of the floorboard and the ruler on the ground beside him. He grabbed the brown box and ripped open the tape. He pulled it into the dim light and lifted the lid. Inside the box, he found everything Wanda described and more.

Beneath the vials lay an old, folded official document stamped with Biotech’s logo. The name at the top of the blueprint was his own:

DNA Tract: Clayton Wethered

Biotechnologically Engineered vessel MODEL 07

To: Technician Wanda Castillo

Primary objective: Maintain domestication of MODEL 07

You are required to maintain the domestic illusion and ensure daily compliance by dosing MODEL 07 once a day with the Synthetic Biotech-suppressant provided by the agency. MODEL 07 is specifically designed for gradual self-awareness over a ten-year cycle. However, if unauthorized breach or malfunction occurs immediately initiate a hard manual reset.

Clayton ruffled through the old, crumbled, and dusted documents looking for more. Incredulous, his eyes scanned the documents before him. Then, there it was. A technical diagram of his own body.

A hard manual reset can be triggered by applying a heavy pressure force to the primary neural cluster located precisely three inches below the left earlobe.

Note: This will completely purge the current vessel

Clayton dropped the document on the dirt floor. He reached up behind his left ear, his fingers trembling. He felt around until his fingers sensed a rigid bump under his skin. Clayton knew pressing this pressure point would prove one of two things. If he was human, pressing this would mean nothing. He was a man, and this was an April fool’s prank. But if he was what that document said he was–-what Wanda said he was-–it would completely purge him, whatever that meant.

Without thinking, Clayton pressed the bump under his skin.

His hammering heart stopped beating. The air in his lungs escaped quietly, as his chest sunk deep into his ribs. His head hung forward as all his muscles went completely limb, leaving gravity to push his body forward onto the ground.

Above him, footsteps approached the basement door.