Binny Dowdahl accompanied him to the roto,
Joshua Fflowers rattled off a dozen questions about Jack, Prissi,
and Jack and Prissi. Dowdahl had the right answers about Jack, knew
nothing of Prissi as she wasn’t a Bissell student, and raised his
eyebrows until they resembled the St. Louis arch as answer about
the two of them. When Fflowers asked him to find out what he could,
Bissell’s headmaster and chief Myrmidon nodded eagerly.
As soon as the wheelchair was locked in place
and the roto’s blades were spinning, the trillionaire began ogling
Prissi Langue and her family. By the time he landed at the Juvenal
Institute, his biggest finding was how little he was able to
discover, despite access to innumerable interlocked databases and a
host of search engines, about Prissi Langue and her parents.
However, Fflowers was still far too much the scientist to be
stymied by initial failure. He knew that as soon as his rejuve
surgeries were over, he would be back on the trail. He had no
choice. He had to know about the girl.
As Joshua Fflowers considered who and what
Prissi might be, he necessarily thought about his two sons. Even as
he was prepped by a host of nurses to receive his new parts, he
reviewed for the millionth time how those two sons were the
unfathomable punishment he had paid for a well-intentioned act.
Two years after the Centsurety lab explosion,
in an effort to relieve his pain and divert his anger, Fflowers had
had his seed mated with Elena’s eggs. Adaman had been the result.
From the moment of his birth, Fflowers had felt that the son was
nothing like the mother, nor the father. He neither looked like
them—an outcome which belied the supposed advances in genetic
engineering—nor did he act like them. By the time Adaman was two,
Joshua Fflowers learned why. He had thrown the die and lost—because
the die had been loaded. The egg that had been fertilized with his
sperm had not been harvested from Elena’s ovaries. A DNA scan had
revealed that. Months of investigations as to who was the source of
the egg resulted in nothing but dead ends. Knowing that Elena had
switched eggs on him finally brought full force to Fflowers how
much she despised him.
As Adanan grew into a snarky, oily, needy
boy, Fflowers’ revulsion grew alongside. Finally, since he could
not change his feelings, he tried to change the paradigm by having
a second son. Fflowers was fifty-seven when he grew a second son
from an egg that had been carefully considered and even more
carefully tested. The result, Illiya, was somewhat more to his
liking…at first.
Even before the arrival of Illiya, Fflowers
could not think of Adaman as his real son. The boy was a burden, a
disappointment, even his heir, but not his son. Night after night,
Fflowers would wander through the dozens of rooms of the Airie,
which felt twice as big and frighteningly empty since Elena had
gone, and consider the child whom he and Elena could have, and he
had convinced himself, would have made. A child more like Elena and
less like himself.
In the late night chiaroscuro made by the
swirling beams of winger beacons, hawk’s roto searchlights and the
spatter of late night revelers’ erratically weaving flight lights,
Fflowers would walk his own personal stations of the cross. The
high-ceilinged library, crammed with science and myth, where over
and over he had insisted to the doubting Elena that they were too
young and their lives too full to have children…yet. The baronial
dining room where Elena first had mentioned in passing the
anomalous results of her pap exam. The statuary gallery, at that
time his sanctorum, the place where he first had had the idea for
the Centsurety Project. The parterre, with its central allee lined
with marble and alabaster imaginings of all the forms the gods had
left undone. The parterre, where the best and worst of his memories
had been born….
Fflowers looked past the flurry of hands
preparing him for his rejuve….
….It had been on
Joshua Fflowers rattled off a dozen questions about Jack, Prissi,
and Jack and Prissi. Dowdahl had the right answers about Jack, knew
nothing of Prissi as she wasn’t a Bissell student, and raised his
eyebrows until they resembled the St. Louis arch as answer about
the two of them. When Fflowers asked him to find out what he could,
Bissell’s headmaster and chief Myrmidon nodded eagerly.
As soon as the wheelchair was locked in place
and the roto’s blades were spinning, the trillionaire began ogling
Prissi Langue and her family. By the time he landed at the Juvenal
Institute, his biggest finding was how little he was able to
discover, despite access to innumerable interlocked databases and a
host of search engines, about Prissi Langue and her parents.
However, Fflowers was still far too much the scientist to be
stymied by initial failure. He knew that as soon as his rejuve
surgeries were over, he would be back on the trail. He had no
choice. He had to know about the girl.
As Joshua Fflowers considered who and what
Prissi might be, he necessarily thought about his two sons. Even as
he was prepped by a host of nurses to receive his new parts, he
reviewed for the millionth time how those two sons were the
unfathomable punishment he had paid for a well-intentioned act.
Two years after the Centsurety lab explosion,
in an effort to relieve his pain and divert his anger, Fflowers had
had his seed mated with Elena’s eggs. Adaman had been the result.
From the moment of his birth, Fflowers had felt that the son was
nothing like the mother, nor the father. He neither looked like
them—an outcome which belied the supposed advances in genetic
engineering—nor did he act like them. By the time Adaman was two,
Joshua Fflowers learned why. He had thrown the die and lost—because
the die had been loaded. The egg that had been fertilized with his
sperm had not been harvested from Elena’s ovaries. A DNA scan had
revealed that. Months of investigations as to who was the source of
the egg resulted in nothing but dead ends. Knowing that Elena had
switched eggs on him finally brought full force to Fflowers how
much she despised him.
As Adanan grew into a snarky, oily, needy
boy, Fflowers’ revulsion grew alongside. Finally, since he could
not change his feelings, he tried to change the paradigm by having
a second son. Fflowers was fifty-seven when he grew a second son
from an egg that had been carefully considered and even more
carefully tested. The result, Illiya, was somewhat more to his
liking…at first.
Even before the arrival of Illiya, Fflowers
could not think of Adaman as his real son. The boy was a burden, a
disappointment, even his heir, but not his son. Night after night,
Fflowers would wander through the dozens of rooms of the Airie,
which felt twice as big and frighteningly empty since Elena had
gone, and consider the child whom he and Elena could have, and he
had convinced himself, would have made. A child more like Elena and
less like himself.
In the late night chiaroscuro made by the
swirling beams of winger beacons, hawk’s roto searchlights and the
spatter of late night revelers’ erratically weaving flight lights,
Fflowers would walk his own personal stations of the cross. The
high-ceilinged library, crammed with science and myth, where over
and over he had insisted to the doubting Elena that they were too
young and their lives too full to have children…yet. The baronial
dining room where Elena first had mentioned in passing the
anomalous results of her pap exam. The statuary gallery, at that
time his sanctorum, the place where he first had had the idea for
the Centsurety Project. The parterre, with its central allee lined
with marble and alabaster imaginings of all the forms the gods had
left undone. The parterre, where the best and worst of his memories
had been born….
Fflowers looked past the flurry of hands
preparing him for his rejuve….
….It had been on
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