Boy 2.0: Chapters 13–15

“Really?” Bisa asked. “If I was an animal, what would you make me?”
“Uh,” Coal said. “A...panther?”
...He squinted at Bisa and started drawing. Mostly he smoothed out her nose to be longer and more snoutlike, elongated her body a bit, and added a tail. It was a rough sketch, but enough for everyone at the table to get the general idea.

“He did that in like five seconds,” Lindsay said. “It can’t be that much.”
“He took years learning how to do that in five seconds,” Door said. “If everybody could do that in five seconds, you wouldn’t be asking him for it now would you?”
“Plus it wasn’t actually five seconds,” Coal said.
“Metaphor,” Lindsay said. “But you’re right. I definitely couldn’t do that, even if I had all day.”
“Twenty bucks,” Coal said. “I’ll finish it and get it to you tomorrow.”

“Coal made a cartoon portrait of me,” Bisa said at the same time.
“You’re conducting commerce?” Mr. Lucas asked.
Door smothered a laugh and Coal ducked his head to hide his smirk. Who even uses the word commerce?
Bisa shrugged. “Yes. I’m going to pay him.”

“I understand it’s been a rough week for you,” she began.
“It’s Monday,” Coal said.
She smiled again, with a slight tinge of frustration this time. A little bit of you knew what I meant so please don’t try my patience in the corners of her lips. “I meant the last few days. I realize transitions like that are difficult.”

“I understand it’s been a rough week for you,” she began.
“It’s Monday,” Coal said.
She smiled again, with a slight tinge of frustration this time. A little bit of you knew what I meant so please don’t try my patience in the corners of her lips. “I meant the last few days. I realize transitions like that are difficult.”

He closed his eyes and tried to focus on his heart rate, taking slow, shallower breaths. He counted backward from ten, from twenty, from fifty. He told his heart to slow down. Begged it. Pleaded with it. Took another deep breath despite the smell and blew it out again. He felt the tingle in his skin dissipating. Then he opened his eyes. Cautiously. But he was back. His skin was his skin again. Dark. Even. Solid.

Help was exactly what Coal needed. But he also needed anonymity. He couldn’t explain everything that happened that day, and even if he told someone what he did know, what were the odds he’d end up in somebody’s lab with a Ms. Freeman watching over him in a terrarium?

“What makes you so interested in biotechnology?” Dr. Achebe asked.
Coal sat in the front passenger seat, ogling the bright, shiny dials in the car’s dash. “Not biotech so much as DNA studies,” he said.
“How come?”
“I don’t know who my birth parents are,” Coal said. “I’ve been a foster kid my whole life.”

“Makes sense,” Dr. Achebe said. “Have you ever heard of the twin paradox? Over the years, we’ve found that twins who were separated at birth often wind up living astonishingly parallel lives. They’ll work the same jobs, marry the same type of partner, they’ll even live in the same place as their separated twin.”

“What else are you interested in,” Dr. Achebe asked Coal.
“Art,” Coal said.
“Oh yeah? What kind?”
“Paintings. Like Jean-Michel Basquiat, Eduardo Kobra, Banksy,” Coal said.
“Basquiat is one of my favorites,” Dr. Achebe said. “I don’t know Kobra.”
“He does huge murals using spray paint.”

“Here,” Dr. Achebe said. The dashboard’s touch screen cleared and a search bar and on-screen keyboard came up. “Let’s see.”
Coal typed, and Kobra’s brightly hued, geometric portraits quickly filled the screen. When Dr. Achebe pulled up at a stop light, he looked at them.

“How are they political?” Dr. Achebe asked.
“It’s taking something that you’d see at a kid’s party, something that’s easy to pop, and making it into something major and permanent. Something that isn’t going to end up in a landfill because it’s purposeful and not disposable.”

Behind a large desk, a huge piece of abstract art hung, framed against the only non-glass wall.

Dr. Achebe nodded. “Well, we do everything here. Ground up.” He pointed to someone in a glassed-in room taking samples out of a petri dish with a pipette and putting it under a large, heavy-duty microscope hooked up to a computer monitor.

“I believe in understanding your baseline before you start anything at all,” Dr. Achebe said. “That means understanding who you are first, and then from there, you can look in two directions: where you’re going and where you come from.”

Behind him, a scientist put something Coal couldn’t see into a glass box. A mechanized hand took it from the box and put it inside a machine. Another monitor lit up with a graph. The scientist glanced at him, then went back to their work, typing furiously on the keyboard.

He didn’t notice that they’d gone through another set of sliding glass doors until the puff of sanitizing air hit his skin again. It was cold in this new room.

He turned back to look at the rest of the lab, but once the doors shut—with a soft, but determined click—the glass filled in with a pale gray color, like a cloud crossing the sky. It obscured everything on the other side.

“Remember, I promised to have you back home quickly.” Dr. Achebe was looking Coal dead in the eye, evenly, honestly.
Coal tried to convince himself he was being paranoid. Panicking for nothing. He took another breath. “I don’t like needles,” he said.

Then she wiped the area she had just sprayed with an alcohol wipe. She turned away and came back with a scalpel. Its edge glinted in the white lab light.
“Wait!” Coal said.
Too late. She had already cut him. Then she cut again and removed a sliver of his skin with the edge of the knife. Dr. Achebe held out a petri dish and she put it in, then slapped a bandage on Coal’s arm.

Then she wiped the area she had just sprayed with an alcohol wipe. She turned away and came back with a scalpel. Its edge glinted in the white lab light.
“Wait!” Coal said.
Too late. She had already cut him. Then she cut again and removed a sliver of his skin with the edge of the knife. Dr. Achebe held out a petri dish and she put it in, then slapped a bandage on Coal’s arm.

Next, she tied a tourniquet on his arm, picked up a needle, swiped his inner elbow with alcohol, and started to draw blood.

“We’re getting an extra sample,” she said. She shoved something cold and metal into his mouth. He felt a prick in his cheek. She retracted what looked like a tiny pincer. Its contents were deposited into another vial.

Digital files populated the surface of the desk. A couple of them brightened when Coal reached out to them. One was a photo of a group of people wearing lab coats. Among them he recognized a younger Dr. Achebe. The other looked like a PDF scan of a document with the title “The Snow White Project.”
The article he and Mari had found a snippet of.
Genetic modification.

Coal looked at Dr. Achebe. The smile faded from the man’s face. In a flash, his entire demeanor changed from calm and friendly to icy and dangerous.