Stosh collapsed onto his seat and closed his eyes.

  “He can play peek-a-boo. We call it peek-a-doo. Stosh! Peek-a-doo!”

  Stosh put his head down between his thick legs, then popped it out and crooned, “Dooooooooo!”

  “He also knows hide-and-seek. And fetch. Have to be careful, though, because his beak is really strong. Sometimes he bites off doorknobs.”

  “Does he he he not like doorknobs?”

  “If he doesn’t like you, he goes to another room and shuts the door behind him. It’s only happened once. Plumber came by, went on a racist rant while fixing a shower leak. Stosh locked him in the bathroom. I had to take off the hinges to let him out.”

  “Nice one, Stosh.” Sara patted his head again.

  “Dooooooooooo.”

  Frank continued to painstakingly pick at Bert’s scrape with gloved hands and gauze pads, and Bert tried to distract himself by staring out the window. New Mexico, even at night, radiated beauty. An endless sky, full of endless stars, lit up the desert, making it glow a soft blue, and the mountains in the distance cast a serene vibe in a situation that was anything but. They were headed to a motel outside of Kirkstown, to escape the immediate threat and plan a counter-attack.

  I’m coming, ladies.

  Hold tight, Weejy. I’m coming for you.

  “You told me about the first eleven.” Frank made Bert flinch with a spritz of aerosol burn spray. “And said a few things about the remaining nine. But you you you haven’t mentioned any after Number 15, Nikola Tesla.”

  “The most brilliant inventor who ever lived. He’s the one we tracked to the desert.”

  “And who who who—”

  Sara laughed. “Oh my lord, I married an owl.”

  Frank reached forward and tousled Sara’s hair. “That’s because I’m a hoot. Who is Number 16, Bert?”

  “Catherine the Great. She’s in Los Angeles with my friends. They’re all flying in tonight.”

  “And and and Number 17?” Frank asked.

  “Sigmund Freud. The father of modern psychology.”

  Frank frowned. “I never liked Freud. Thought thought thought he was wrong about nearly everything.”

  “Fingers crossed he’s one of the good guys. But Number 18 won’t be. He’s one of history’s worst.”

  “Is it Hitler?” Sara asked. “In the movies they always clone Hitler.”

  “It’s not Hitler. But it’s a bad one.”

  “Don’t tell us. Stalin?” Sara guessed. “Rasputin? Mao Zedong? Pol Pot? Mussolini?”

  “Think more sadistic.”

  “More more more sadistic than those genocidal maniacs?” Frank asked.

  “More hands-on. This guy liked to do the dirty work himself.”

  Sara and Frank tossed out names.

  “Rasputin,” said Sara.

  “Ivan the Terrible,” said Frank.

  “Idi Amin,” said Sara.

  “Nero.”

  “Caligula.”

  “Himmler.”

  “Mengele.”

  “Henry VIII.”

  “Matthew Hopkins.”

  “Who is that?” Bert asked.

  “Witch hunter from the seventeenth century,” Sara explained. “Tortured confessions out of women.”

  “Close. Want a hint?”

  The spouses nodded.

  “Monty Python,” Bert said.

  “A lumberjack?” Frank asked. “A dead parrot?”

  Bert gave another hint. “Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition.”

  “Tomás de Torquemada!” Sara yelled, pointing at Bert in victory. “The Grand Inquisitor of the Spanish Inquisition. Responsible for the torture and execution of thousands. Why would anyone want to clone that monster?”

  Bert shrugged. “From what I’ve read, it was partly a nature versus nurture experiment. They wanted to see if people were born bad.”

  “And what did they find out?”

  “All evidence points to yes. Most of the clones with historically wicked donors wound up being bad people. Though, in defense of heredity, they also tried to replicate the family situation with the adoptive parents. Oddly enough, some of the good ones wound up bad, as well.”

  “What’s your conclusion, Bert? Are we doomed by nature, or or or chance?”

  “Probably some of both. But I’m not about fate being immutable. I haven’t made any physics revelations, even with Einstein’s brain. None of the twenty clones seem to have fulfilled the potential that their donors suggested. History, like life, is about being that person in that place at that time, and most of the results are mundane. Greatness isn’t inherent. Greatness is simply dictated by what a vocal majority of people deem great at any particular time. If the experiment taught anyone anything, it’s that human beings are human beings, even if they’re cloned.”

  Frank applied antibiotic ointment to Bert’s abrasions. “Who’s Number 19?”

  “Charles Darwin.”

  “A fellow scientist. I’d love love love to meet him.”

  “Me, too. But I haven’t been able to track him down. I haven’t been able to track any of the others down, but I have some hunches about Number 20. Mary Tudor.”

  “Bloody Mary.” Sara assumed a serviceable British accent. “Queen of England. And not a beloved one. By some accounts, one of the most evil female rulers to ever live.”

  Bert checked the back window again.

  I swear those are the same headlights. But who could be following us?

  The Beige Boys?

  Someone else?

  Or is it just a coincidence, a traveler taking the same route we are?

  “I know some English history.” Sara dropped the accent. “Supposedly Mary never cried once in her life. Not even as a baby. She was a religious zealot, fond of burning people at the stake.”

  “Not not not a way I’d like to die.”

  “Are there any good ways to die?” Bert wondered.

  “In my sleep, after my hundred and nineteenth birthday,” Frank answered.

  “Having sex,” Sara said.

  Bert could see Frank’s deep frown, even in the dark. “Honey. Yuck yuck yuck.”

  “Why is that bad?”

  “I assume I’ll be the one there there there with you.”

  “You have my permission to finish.”

  “How could I finish if I just saw you die? That’s all sorts of gross.”

  “Okay. How about we both die at the same time?”

  Frank rubbed his chin. “Sure. I guess that’s okay. But let’s both both both be in our hundreds at the time.”

  “Deal. As long as we’re not burned at the stake.”

  “I I I could go for a burned steak right now. Anyone else hungry?”

  “We need to stop for gas. We can pick something up and eat on the go.”

  Bert checked the back mirror again. “I know I probably sound paranoid, but has that car been following us?”

  “Yes,” Sara answered. “And it isn’t paranoid.”

  “Sara and I have been through some shit. Separately, and together. Our survival instincts are a bit more acute than most most most of the general population.”

  “It’s not a black van,” Sara said.

  “It’s a woman in a green Honda,” Frank said.

  “We’re keeping an eye on her,” Sara said.

  I’m really glad these two found me. I’d be a mess on my own right now.

  Frank turned back to Bert. “So what are your hunches on Bloody Mary?”

  “Mary’s trail went cold over a decade ago. I can’t find any recent trace of her. So she’s either hiding for some reason, or she died.”

  And it probably wasn’t during sex.

  “And what is going on with with with Number 13?”

  Ugh. That guy. “SoJo and I met with him. He’s… not pleasant. But Tom and company are going to stop over there, try to convince him to join us, after they pick up Abe. Safety in numbers.”

  “We’re actually going to meet a clone of Abraham Lincoln,” Sara mused.

  Bert made a face. “Try to limit your expectations. Abe isn’t exactly what you’d expect.”

  But he’s a whole lot better than 13…

  NUMBER 13

  Phoenix, Arizona

  The first video finished rendering, and he uploaded it to YouTube. A masterwork composition: a dubstep track he called “Discordia Leprosy” which played over a 50x fast-motion video of a dead squirrel, rotting and becoming infested with maggots. The bass had been tweaked so high it would cause distortion on every speaker that tried to play it.

  Not many people clicked on his art. His nine videos had a total of two hundred and seventeen views in 3+ years. Eight down votes. Two likes. Six comments that he knew by memory.

  Trash. You suck.

  You call that music? Are you f*cking def?!?!

  Only thing worse than your video is your song.

  I want that 3 mins of my life back.

  FAKE NEWS!!!!!

  I make $3000 a month from home!

  People are ignorant sheep who wouldn’t know musical genius even if it was raping their ears.

  True talent is rarely recognized. But the artist must persevere.

  Though that last comment is intriguing.

  I’d really like to make $3,000 a month from home.

  He followed the link, but it turned out to be spam.

  Everybody sucks. Everything sucks.

  The second video still had an hour of rendering to go. In the meantime, he booted up the Onion Router on his burner laptop and logged onto Usher House 2.0 on Darknet, looking for potential clips.

  He’d filmed the dead squirrel himself, setting up the shoot in his crawlspace, partially wrapping the scene in a plastic garbage bag to contain the stench. Catching squirrels wasn’t easy, and he used an assortment of traps, both store-bought and homemade.

  Killing was much easier than catching, and much more satisfying. Squirrels had a nasty bite, so he kept his hands off, though it would have been glorious to squeeze the life out of them, feeling their little bones crack in his grasp. Instead he drowned them, then carefully dried them off, posed them in thrift store doll clothes, made some strategic body cuts to help with the rotting, and let the camera roll.

  Composition and decomposition.

  I wonder if anyone watching my vids gets the irony.

  Probably not. Because I’m smarter than all of them.

  He found a video of a man being flogged. But the camera focused on the skin being flayed off his back, instead of his face.

  It’s a waste of suffering if you can’t see their faces.

  He found another vid, some naked woman from some third world country, tied to a chair with her feet in some sort of vice that was crushing them. She alternated between screaming, begging in a foreign language, and passing out.

  He set up his screen capture card and recorded thirty seconds of her agony.

  I have the perfect song for that.

  He stole a few more clips. A guy getting acid poured into his eyes. Three beheadings. An arm amputation. A woman set on fire.

  Unlike YouTube, where the Copyright Gestapo would pounce if you took an image or video or sample without permission, snuff movies were fair use. The original owner would never file a DMCA takedown.

  Probably because they’d be arrested for torture and murder.

  Which is why I have to be careful.

  All the cool stuff was on the deep web, but that wasn’t where you got views and stans. Darknet was all hush-hush/closed-door/super-private.

  You can’t go viral with a VPN.

  Not that I want to go viral…

  I don’t need lamestream approval to know how good I am.

  He checked his desktop, to see if his new YouTube vid had any hits yet.

  2 views.

  But I think they’re both mine.

  He was about to walk away from his rig and add more bleach to his aquarium to watch the fish freak out, when his new video finished rendering ahead of time.

  Sweet.

  He uploaded it to his anonymous Sup-R-Locker account, changed countries on his VPN, and logged onto ReadHard, his preferred social news aggregator website. There was no moderation as long as you didn’t post illegal material directly on the board. But there were no rules against putting up links.

  He spent a few minutes on his thread, RH/TechnoDeath.

  Unlike YouTube, this had hundreds of comments and thumbs-ups.

  Sik!!!!!

  Music=perfect. Image=perfect.

  Sholy Hit, tht was so death.

  HRDCRE.

  Fans. I have fans.

  Not that it matters. They’re all lowly consumers.

  They aren’t CCs, like me.

  Check this new vid out, he typed, and as he was linking it, his mother walked unannounced into his bedroom.

  He immediately closed his laptop. “Jesus Christ, Mother! You’re supposed to knock!”

  “And you’re supposed to be looking for a job.”

  “I have a job. I’m a Content Creator.”

  “What is that? Like a psychiatrist? You make people content?”

  “I make music and videos.”

  His mother frowned. “Have you made any money doing that?”

  “I’m an artist, Mother. Artists don’t care about money.”

  “You don’t care about money because I pay all the bills.”

  “That’s because I give you my TANF and FNF.”

  Where is your snide comment about getting all my food stamps and welfare benefits, Mother? What do you have to say to that?

  Nothing.

  Just like I thought.

  Shut up and deal with it.

  “I cleaned your fish tank.” She crossed her arms. “The water was dirty.”

  “I told you to leave my fish alone, Mother.”

  “I told you if you don’t take care of your pets, you aren’t allowed to keep them in my house.”

  “You wonder why I don’t want to be here? It’s because you’re always calling it your house. You’ve been doing that ever since you told me I was adopted, when I was ten.”

  “That was a long time ago. You’re a grown man now.”

  “Says the woman who knew her real parents.”

  “I just want you to be happy, Van.”

  “I’d be happy if you left me alone and let me get back to work.”

  She refused to leave.

  “Can’t you just go?”

  “Have you spoken to your friends?”

  Friends?

  Oh. She means those morons who came over, trying to convince me that I’m a clone or some shit like that.

  “They’re not my friends, Mother. They were trying to scam me.”

  “They seemed nice.”

  They seemed nice all right; nice to kill.

  And I could have done it, too. I could have slit their throats and recorded them while they bled to death.

  If I wasn’t living in my mother’s basement.

  If murder wasn’t illegal.

  If I could avoid accountability by getting the money and fame and power I deserve.

  Everything sucks.

  “There’s a smell in the crawlspace again. I think something died in there. Can you check?”

  “Sure, Mother.”

  But maybe first I’ll bash you in your old-ass face until your head busts open and then I’ll drag you in the crawlspace and cut your face off and film your busted-up dead old-ass start to decay and rot and putrefy.

  There’s my next song title. Nagging Mother Putrefaction.

  “There’s Hamburger Helper in the fridge.”

  “I’m not hungry.”

  “You need to eat, Van.”

  “Fine. You can bring me a bowl. But knock when you come back.”

  Mother didn’t leave. She just stood there, judging.

  “What?”

  “There are dating apps, Van. You can find a real girl. You don’t have to be wasting your time on those naughty videos.”

  “Jesus Christ, Mother! I’m not watching porn!”

  “You hide the computer screen whenever I come in. What is a mother to think?”

  “That I’m an adult and I deserve privacy.”

  “I’m just saying that maybe you should get out into the real world. Meet people, rather than spend all your time online. Did you know that those folks who came by were the first friends to visit you in almost twenty years?”

  Again with this.

  “They’re not my friends, Mother. And maybe I don’t invite people over because you embarrass me.”

  “They seemed like nice, normal people. Not like all of those horrible people in the pictures you keep on your wall.”

  She’s such a broken record.

  “Do I ride your ass about your Precious Moments collection?”

  “Precious Moments bring joy to people’s lives with their adorably angelic figurines. You’ve got a rogue’s gallery of famous murderers, that you’ve put in my nice picture frames.”

  “The frames were in the attic, gathering dust.”

  “Better in the attic than being used for those terrible people. Like those two. The Snorks.”

  “The Korks,” Van corrected. “Charles and Alex Kork.”

  Siblings who were serial killers. Why didn’t I have a cooperative family like that?

  “Who is that awful one?” Mother pointed. “With all the scars?”

  “Which one? Donaldson? Walter Cissick? Lester Paks?”

  Each of them beautifully scarred. Each of them a pinnacle of murdering, deranged psychopathy.

  “They’re all awful. Living nightmares. Who is that old one?”

  “Augustus Torble. He had a torture chamber in his house.”

  I so wished I had one right now.

  “Why do you have that normal-looking one on the wall?”

  “That’s Gaff. One of the greatest spree shooters of all time.”

  “How can you talk like that? There’s nothing great about blowing people away.”

  It would be great to blow you away, Mother. I don’t fantasize to porn, but I do fantasize about putting a bullet in your skull and rolling around naked in your splattered brains.

  But I’m sure all children want to do that to their mothers. Probably.

  “I thought you were getting me Hamburger Helper.”

  “Do you want a big bowl or a small bowl?”

  God. She’s so annoying. “What flavor is it?”