The Games (44 page)

Specialists had tried to reconfigure what had happened after the fire. But everything was lost. The blood and tissue samples were burned to nothing. Helix Labs had been an isolated, centralized unit. Everything was kept on-site, with very little outsourced to other labs. When the place burned to the ground, everything had burned with it. All its secrets. All but this one.

The top scientists in the country had been working for the last six months to unravel the complexity found within the little black-skinned organism that lay before him now. They’d done CAT scans and X rays and genotyping, and as of yet, the attempt had been a complete failure. The results explained nothing. The thing was a relic from a past golden age. A reminder of greatness lost, like the Pyramids of Egypt.

The organism carried more gene sequences in its haploid configuration than most species did as diploids. It had more genes than it could ever use. It was a vessel.

When the blood vial was full, he snapped the seal closed and placed the vial in a plastic container. He loaded up his cart and wheeled it out of the incubator. He shut the door. He took off his smock and his gloves and his mask. And then he turned and walked away.

Walking away was the easy part. Forgetting was another thing. He
still had dreams sometimes about the little creature. Other times he couldn’t sleep at all. What kept him awake at night was this knowledge: the organism was a gamete. A single haploid set of genes. It begged a question, of course.

What would happen?

What would happen if they ever found another one?

Like a sperm and an egg coming together, what would they make?

To my mother and to my father

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

There are a great many people on whose guidance and friendship I’ve depended as this manuscript has slowly taken shape. This book wouldn’t have been possible without their help.

Special thanks to the Mean Group, to Michael Poore, Josh Perz, and Marty-Tina Vrehas, who were in the trenches with me from the beginning; special thanks to the HWG en masse; a big thanks to Jeff Manes and Jack Skillingstead, inspiring writers and friends; thanks to my sisters for being there; to Christine for her continuous, unwavering support, even back when it was all just a crazy dream; thanks to all my industry friends over the years—to Tim for working all those late-night double shifts with me and talking books between samples; thanks to Codex, and to Bec, and to all the first readers who slogged their way through multiple drafts. Thanks to Michael Braff, editor extraordinaire; and to Betsy Mitchell and Chris Schluep, for believing in this book in the first place. I offer a special double helping of thanks to my awesome agent, Seth Fishman, who contacted me out of the blue, and without whom this book never would have seen the light of day—sometimes an email can change your life. Thanks to Sheila Williams for buying my first story and
making the whole rest of everything else possible; thanks to Gardner Dozois, Jonathan Strahan, and Rich Horton for noticing the short fiction of a new writer. Thanks to John Joseph Adams and to Marc Laidlaw for being there. Thanks to the professor in that one writing class I took who wrote in the margins: “This has potential.” And thank you, Valve, for being the amazing place you are.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

T
ED
K
OSMATKA
was born and raised in northwest Indiana and spent more than a decade working in various laboratories there before moving to the Pacific Northwest. His short fiction has been nominated for both the Nebula Award and the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award. He now works in the videogame industry, where he’s a full-time writer at Valve, home of Half-Life, Portal, and Dota 2.