Rift (33 page)

Concerns about my own health arose after the revelations about the altered scanning procedure, of course, and the media is quick to play up this angle for added suspense. But so far I've experienced no side effects. It worries me that something could arise later, neurological defects like what Cameron experienced, but with no concrete evidence I see no point in worrying about this.

There are also many questions regarding how it “felt” to have a clone. I never really figure out how to answer this one. It was strange, that much is certain, but sometimes I'm a little jealous of him. Because during his brief life, Cameron experienced what I have spent my entire life looking for: purpose. His was a doomed existence, but he knew what he wanted to do—what he
needed
to do, really—and accomplished it. For that I will be forever proud of him.

Luke's death closed my eyes a long time ago. By my own choice, and my own admission, I have ignored life since then. I have taken for granted Misty's love and my own existence in this world. But Cameron's death has convinced me that life is something to be cherished. Perhaps this concept seems simple, a clichéd axiom any intelligent person should understand without question. Perhaps. But a quick examination of our volatile global community reveals that not everyone has reached the same conclusion. I guess all any of us can do is get the most out of every day, treat others with respect, and make sure we teach the same thing to our children.

         

The last thing I should mention is that Crystal is pregnant.

With Cameron's child.

She was worried at first that her condition as a clone, combined with Cameron's rapid deterioration, might jeopardize the baby's future. But so far, six months into the pregnancy, everything has proven to be perfectly routine. Crystal is healthy, the baby is healthy, and she has decided, after much soul-searching, to allow my wife and me to adopt him. Misty was a little hesitant, of course, to accept into our family a child conceived (in a roundabout way) by her husband's infidelity, but in the end she decided there was no better outcome from this terrible situation than a child for us to love.

A child.

My son.

I'm going to be a father.

It's a strange feeling to have been given such a miraculous blessing. Already I find myself worrying that I will never be the father he deserves. But the best way I can celebrate Cameron's brief existence is to devote myself to making the most of his wonderful gift.

So I will celebrate him.

Celebrate life.

Celebrate his extraordinary life.

author's note

While the science of the transmission machine ultimately goes unexplained, quantum teleportation is, in fact, real. Lee's explanation of EPR correlation is based on actual experiments—which only work, however, if the original is destroyed. The idea of using entanglement to transmit something as complex as a human being (or even a single-celled organism, for that matter) is wildly speculative. A more likely near-future application of quantum teleportation is in the field of computing.

I would also like to acknowledge that Lee's mathematical assessment of scanning a human being—the amount of data such an examination would generate and the resulting problem with bandwidth and transmission technology—was paraphrased from an informal discussion of quantum teleportation by Samuel Braunstein.

Readers in Arizona and Texas may also notice that some geographic locations have been fictionalized. It is all intentionally done.

More information about
Rift
and the author can be found at
www.richardcox.net
.

about the author

R
ICHARD
C
OX
was born in Texas and currently lives in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where he is at work on his next novel.

Rift
is a work of fiction. Names, places, and incidents are the products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

A Ballantine Book

Published by The Random House Publishing Group

Copyright © 2004 by Richard Cox

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.

Ballantine and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

www.ballantinebooks.com

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available from the publisher upon request.

eISBN: 978-0-345-47848-1

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