Echoes

Alan Brennert

Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction

May, 1997

Alan Brennert was beginning to make a reputation for himself in the genre in the seventies as a writer of finely crafted short stories, but then he was lured away by Hollywood. Since then, he has served as executive story consultant on The Twilight Zone during its recent television revival, has written teleplays for China Beach, The Mississippi, and Darkroom, and has twice been nominated for the Writers Guild Award. He's also published two novels, Kindred Spirits and Time and Chance. In spite of all this, he still finds time for the occasional short story, which show up from time to time in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Pulphouse, and elsewhere. His short fiction has been collected in Her Pilgrim Soul and Other Stories and in Ma Qui and Other Phantoms, which includes his Nebula Award-winning "Ma Qui."

In the lyrical and bittersweet story that follows, he shows us that just as sometimes people can't see the forest for the trees, so sometimes you might not be able to hear the music for the echoes…

— Gardner Dozois

Even now, I can't bring myself to blame my parents. They had their reasons; they carried scars from their own childhoods. My father's father was a manic-depressive, his mood swings legendary, the household perpetually caught between the thunder of his passions and the gray spaces of his despair. My father, when he married, longed for a house filled with music and a little girl's laughter; and naturally he wanted to ensure that his daughter didn't inherit her grandfather's affliction. Back in the eighties, when my father was growing up, they hadn't yet mapped the gene that causes bipolar disorder, much less figured out how to mask it; if only it had stopped at that. My mother, for her part, had had an idyllic childhood, perhaps too much so: something of a musical prodigy, she had spent fifteen happy years in violin recitals, only to discover that youthful virtuosity doesn't necessarily mature into adult genius. Having bitterly learned the limits of her own talent, she was determined that her daughter would know no limits.

And so I was conceived—an appropriate term, I think, since I (and thousands like me) began more as a concept than a person, a set of parameters later realized in flesh. We were an affluent family with a home in Reston, a tony suburb in northern Virginia, but even for an affluent couple gene enhancement is not a cheap proposition, and I was to have no brothers or sisters. But my parents got their money's worth. By the age of four—as soon as I had the necessary hand strength for the piano—I was picking out complex melodies I'd heard on the radio. I had, have, an eidetic memory, and as soon as I learned to read music, I discovered I could sight-read virtually anything that was put in front of me—taking in a page at a glance, then playing it effortlessly. Eighty percent of so-called musical genius is just this facility to sight-read, a lucky fluke of memory; but of course in my case, luck played no part in it.

The other twenty percent is technique, and I had that as well. By the age of seven I was playing Bach, the piece he'd written for his own daughter, the Anna Magdalena Notebook; by eight, his Two-Part Inventions; by nine, I had mastered the more challenging parts of Bartok's Mikrokosmos. I kept a busy schedule: music lessons twice a week, two hours of practice each day, the occasional student recital, a normal load of schoolwork. But I enjoyed it, I truly did. I loved music; loved making music. Of course it's true that I was quite literally born to love it, shaped not just genetically but by early exposure to music, the "hard wiring" of my sensory cortex that locked in my musical skills; at times I wonder if my passion is less real for that, but the sweet melancholy that grips me as I play the Adagio from Marcello's Concerto in D minor, the serenity I feel when performing Debussy's Image, these are real emotions, regardless of whether genetic conduits were laid to channel them.

Who knows? Perhaps even the degree of my obsession with music was predetermined, manipulated. That might explain my single-minded attention to it in my earliest years (when I most needed such single-mindedness), forsaking the company of other children my age; I was almost twelve before I had the first hint of something missing from my life, and by then it was a little late to acquire the social skills others had learned as a matter of course. I had a few acquaintances at school, I was no pariah, but playmates? Not really. Confidants? Hardly. At three o'clock each afternoon, as my classmates scattered to local playgrounds or shopping malls, I was somehow left behind, like a stone in the heart of a leaf storm, too heavy to take flight. I wandered home to practice, or speed-read novels in the woods near Lake Audubon, taking in pages as though I were drawing breaths, with no more real understanding of the life I was reading about than my lungs understood the oxygen they took in.

On one such afternoon, autumn light waning around me, I lay on my stomach on a fan of oak leaves, reading a book and listening to Rachmaninoff on my laser chip, when I heard a boy's voice behind me say, "Hi."

Startled, I sat up and turned around. There was a boy, about my age, sitting up against the thick trunk of a maple tree, big floppy sketch pad—orange cover, cream-colored pages—propped up on his knees. Like me, he had fair skin and dark hair, but he was about half a head taller than I. There was something vaguely familiar about him; I wondered if I hadn't seen him in school.

"Hi," I said. I hadn't heard him approach, and I was sure he hadn't been sitting there when I lay down, ten minutes before. But I was so pleased to be talking to someone—that someone was talking to me—that I didn't give it a further thought.

He smiled, a friendly enough smile. "My name's Robert."

I might have been lonely, but I was still shy; I took a cautious step toward him. "I'm Katherine. Kathy."

"You live around here?"

I nodded. "On Howland Drive."

"Yeah?" His eyes brightened. "Me too."

So that was it. I must have seen him on our street. Feeling a little less reticent, I nodded toward his sketch pad. "Can I see?"

"Sure." He angled the pad so I could get a better look, as I sat down beside him. The top page was a lovely pencil sketch of the surrounding woods, exhibiting (I can say today) a very sophisticated understanding of perspective, light, shadow.

But being twelve years old and knowing nothing of any of this, all I said was, "Wow."

That was enough. He beamed. "Thanks," he said. He flipped through the book, showing me other sketches, some still-lifes, a few portraits, all of them excellent.

"Do you go to school for this?" I asked.

"I take lessons."

"Me too." I added, "Piano."

"Yeah? Cool."

He flipped to a portrait of a girl with blonde hair and big eyes, and I let out a little yelp of recognition. "Cindy Lennox!" I cried out. "You know Cindy, too?"

"Yeah, sure, I go to school with her."

He flipped past Cindy's portrait to a fresh piece of paper, began absently sketching as he talked. "I'm getting a paint-box for Christmas," he announced, "half the size of this pad, with its own hard drive, oil and watercolor templates…man, the stuff you can do with one of those, it's incredible!"

Not to be outdone, I said, "I'm getting a new orchestral sequencing program for my MusicMaster. I'll be able to add up to fifteen different voices—strings, horns, keyboard—"

He looked up from his sketch and smiled, as though something had just occurred to him. "You're one too, aren't you?" he said.

"One what?"

His smile took on a secret edge. "You know. When the doctors do something to you, before you're even born?"

Suddenly I felt afraid. I knew exactly what he meant, of course; it was all over the media, there was even a website about it on the Schoolnet. Some parents even took their kids on TV and talked about it; but most, like mine, kept quiet, fearing that their children would be discriminated against, excluded from scholastic or talent competition (though this was technically illegal) with non-enhanced kids.

I knew what I was, but had sworn to my parents I'd never talk to anyone about it. So reflexively I shot back, "Not me."

"Yeah, sure." He sounded unconvinced, and I must admit, the idea of actually meeting someone else like myself thrilled as well as frightened me.

So without admitting anything about myself, I said, "So you're one?"

He nodded, switching pencil colors, continuing to sketch. "My folks'd kill me if they heard, but I don't care. I'm not ashamed of it." He looked up; gave me a little smile. "Are you?"

This was getting dangerous. I stood up quickly. "I—I've gotta go."

"Don't you want to see your picture?"

"My what?"

He turned the pad around, showing me its face: my face. A rough outline, without much detail, only two colors (dark gray and light blue), but a really good likeness. My dark hair, cut in a short pageboy; my lips, which always seemed to me too thin, pursed in a shy little half-smile; my eyes, the irises a light blue, so light my father once told me he could see the sky in them…

"That's really good," I said, impressed. "Can I—"

I looked up at him…and my breath caught in my chest.

"What is it?" he said, sensing my distress. I didn't answer. I was looking in his eyes—the irises a light blue; very light. He said something else, and I didn't really hear it; I was watching his lips as he spoke…

"Kathy?" I finally heard him say. "What is it, what's wrong?"

"Nothing," I lied. But inside I felt strange, as though I had discovered something I shouldn't have—like turning over a rock and finding nightcrawlers underneath. Something similar squirmed inside me when I looked at Robert. I told him I had to go home and practice my piano; he seemed disappointed, started to get up, but I was well on my way before he could suggest walking back together.

Later, playing alone on the swing set in my backyard, I realized I had turned my back on someone who might've become my first real friend, and the rush of the wind blew my tears back into my eyes, and I thought I would drown in my own regret.

* * *

I didn't dare tell my parents about Robert, of course—I was afraid they wouldn't believe that I hadn't actually told him anything about myself. I kept a cautious eye out for him at school, but never caught so much as a glimpse of him, which I thought strange, considering the size of the school. Finally, consumed by equal parts anxiety and need, I went up to Cindy Lennox one day in the cafeteria and said, "I met a friend of yours the other day. He said his name was Robert."

She looked blank. "Who?"

"Well, I don't know his last name, but he did a sketch of you. He's an artist?"

She just shook her head. "I don't know any artists named Robert."

I felt like an idiot. I stammered out something, guess I'm mistaken sorry bye, and quickly got out of there. I resolved to forget about Robert entirely; he gave me the creeps, why did I even care who he was?

I went home, my mother took me to my Thursday session with my piano instructor, Professor Laangan, and I gladly lost myself in Chopin and Bach for the next hour. When I got home I banged out of the house, into the backyard, intending to play on the swing set until dinnertime—

But there was someone already on the swing.

Not Robert; a girl. I stopped short. Her back was to me; all I saw was a dark brown ponytail bobbing behind her as she swung.

On my swing. In my backyard!

"Excuse me?" I said. That startled her. She jumped off; turned around to face me, hands indignantly on hips.

"What are you doing in my yard?" she demanded.

As before, I couldn't answer. I was so stunned, I couldn't even speak.

I was staring…at myself.

Me but not—me: her hair longer, ponytail arcing like a whip behind her, and though her features were identical to mine, I was seeing them configured in a way I never had before—thin lips twisted in a sneer, sky-blue eyes flashing with annoyance, head cocked at a haughty little angle. "Well?" she said petulantly.

Finally I found my voice, even if it did crack a little: "This—this is my yard."

She took a few steps toward me, hands still on her hips, a certain swagger in her walk. "Oh, is it now?"

I stepped back, a reflex. She smiled, sensing that she had the advantage. "Look," she said slowly, "you're obviously not very bright, so it really wouldn't be fair of me, with a 200 I.Q., to take advantage, but…oh, what the heck. This is your yard, so, ipso facto, you must be…Katherine Brannon?"

I couldn't stop staring at her. It was like looking into a mirror, but having your reflection suddenly start mouthing off at you. I was silent long enough that she said, "Hello? Can you at least pretend to some intelligence? Especially if you're trying to impersonate the winner of the Fairfax County Scholastic—"

I didn't care what she'd won; I'd had enough of this little brat. "I live here!" I shouted suddenly, and was pleased to see her flinch. "I don't care who you think you are, this is my house!"

Those crystal blue eyes, my eyes, were transparent with hatred. "We'll just see about that," she said coldly, then turned on her heel—and ran toward the house. I'd left the back door open; she ran through it and out of sight. I raced in after her, through the kitchen and into the living room, where my father was just sitting down to watch the news.

"Where is she?" I yelled, breathless. He blinked.

"Where is who? And why are you yelling, young lady?"

"The girl! The one who ran in! The one with—" I almost said, The one with my face, but wisely didn't take it that far.

"The only girl running in here," my mother said, coming up behind me, "is you."

It was true. I searched my bedroom, the family room, even the kitchen again; the girl was gone. Shaken, pressed by my parents for answers, I told them I was just pretending; made it seem as though I were chasing an imaginary playmate. And as I lay in bed that night, I almost convinced myself of the same thing; that my imagination—and loneliness—had conjured up my strange nemesis. I went to school resolved to try and overcome my shyness, to make more friends somehow—to find the time, between lessons and practice, to do the normal things other girls did.

In the cafeteria at lunchtime, I noticed a new girl with long, silky blonde hair sitting alone at a table, eating her macaroni and cheese. Screwing up my nerve, I marched right over and introduced myself.

"Hi," I said. "You're new, aren't you?"

The girl shook aside her long shock of hair, looked up, and smiled at me.

"Yes," she said, shyly pleased, "I just transferred over from public."

And once again, I was looking into my own eyes.

Involuntarily I cried out, a yelp of shock and fear. This instantly made me the focus of all attention in the cafeteria, which distracted me just long enough to look away from the blonde girl, the blonde me, for a moment…and when I looked back, she was gone.

I spent the rest of the lunch hour feeling the eyes of my classmates on me, like sunlight focused through a magnifying glass; their whispers, their little sniggers, were even worse, each a tiny dagger in my back. When the bell rang, I greeted it as a deliverance; but what it delivered me into turned out to be far worse.

During math period a male version of me—not Robert but another boy with my eyes, lips, nose—looked up periodically from his desk, rattled off the solution to an equation as though he had a calculator in his head, then went back to scribbling on an electronic notepad. No one else seemed to notice him, and I kept silent, biting my lip, my hands trembling the whole hour.

In English I glanced up from my own notescreen to find the blonde Kathy (she signed it Kathi) standing before the class, reciting an essay—even as my teacher, Mrs. McKinnon, simultaneously lectured us on the proper use of participles. I sat there, the two voices clashing in my head—trying to drown them out with my thoughts, a memory of the bombastic third movement of Hindemith's Mathis der Maler—praying for the blonde me to shut up and sit down…

In gym class a taller, lither version of myself straddled the parallel bars like a budding Olympian gymnast; she swung her perfectly proportioned legs up, up, up, balanced herself for several moments in a perfect handstand, then swung down and vaulted off the bars. And watching her amazing balance, her strength, her grace, I felt the first shameful pang of what was to become a familiar envy…

By the end of the day, as I hurried out of the building, they were everywhere: the bratty Katherine (Katja, she called herself) was holding court by the stairwell, her mocking laugh at someone's expense echoing through the corridor; in the music room one version of me played the violin, as another practiced the flute; in shop class Robert was making a wooden horse from soft balsa, touching the edge of its mane to a spinning lathe.

I hurried home, but to my horror they were all following me, a procession of Katherines, male and female, tall and short, dark and blonde and everything in between—all laughing or talking, bouncing balls or hefting schoolbooks, a phantom regiment haunting my every step. I ran the last several blocks, ran into the imagined safety of my home, crying "Mommy! Daddy!" but this was no refuge either: as I burst into the living room I heard a voice, my voice, raised in song, saw myself standing by the piano, practicing the scales with a perfect pitch I didn't possess; saw too a red-haired Kathy with sculpted nose, green eyes, and full lips, talking endlessly on the phone; saw a tomboy Kathy bang in in torn jeans and T-shirt, yelling for Mom—

It took me a moment to realize that I was screaming Shut up! Shut up! SHUT UP! at the top of my voice, shouting Mommy! Daddy! Make them go AWAY, and as I fell sobbing to the floor I saw my mother, her face ashen, stumbling as she rushed toward me—and then she was holding me, rocking me, and for one terrible moment I wasn't even sure, I didn't know, which one of us she really held…

* * *

The hospital came as a relief. I didn't know why at the time, but the number of other Katherines dwindled from dozens to a handful, and the more radically different ones—boys; blondes; gymnasts—didn't appear at all. The ones that did appear (and that was the correct word: as I lay in bed, staring into space, I saw them walk into the room as through a fold in the air, then exit, minutes or hours later, in the same way) all looked pretty much like me, and all looked just about as screwed up, as well. One sat in a corner and cried for what seemed hours on end; one angrily pounded her fists on the door and screamed obscenities; another tore a small piece of loose metal from the bed frame, entered the toilet, and never came out—I stayed out of the bathroom for hours, my bladder bursting, terrified at what I might find in there.

Seeing these terrible alternatives, ironically enough, was the best thing for me: determined not to end up like any of them, I didn't let my fear turn to panic, or hysteria. I stayed calm when the doctors asked me questions, I told them everything I'd seen and continued to see; they responded gravely and not, oddly enough, condescendingly. Almost all doctors treat children as though they're not merely young but retarded as well; yet here were a bunch of adults soberly asking me questions as if I too were an adult: "What were the differences, physically, between the boy you met in the woods and the boy in math class?" "Did all of the other Katherines call themselves that, or did they use other names?"

Their matter-of-factness helped to keep me calm; even encouraged me, when they asked if I was seeing anyone at the moment, to shrug and say, "Oh, sure. There's one sitting in the corner right now." And I'd swear I saw one of them glance, ever so slightly, into the corner of the room, then quickly back again.

Each of my parents blamed the other for what had happened: my father accused my mother of working me into a state of nervous exhaustion, and my mother, hurt, shot back that there was no mental illness on her side of the family. I heard all this late one night when they thought I was asleep; heard also my father's wounded silence, pregnant with guilt and fear that perhaps his father's legacy hadn't been extinguished, after all.

But as it turned out there was more than enough guilt to pass around. When the doctors finished their examination and sat down to talk to my parents (though I didn't learn this until years later) their first question was, "Is she gene-enhanced?" Apparently this sort of "psychotic break," as they called it, was not uncommon among the genetically enhanced—one in every ten children suffered under some similar kind of delusional system, the onset usually just before puberty. They didn't know why; all they could do was study the pathology and hope to understand it. The good news was, most children, with therapy, could learn to distinguish between reality and delusion. Would my parents agree to place me in out-patient therapy, as part of a study group?

Of course they agreed. The choices they'd made for me, for my life, now came back to haunt them; and where once they had dreamed for me a life far above normal, now they prayed it would be merely, blessedly, normal.

My favorite of the doctors was Dr. Carroll, a prematurely gray woman in her late thirties; she came after the first round of interrogators, and immediately endeared herself to me by bringing me a set of flowered barrettes for my hair. "They're my daughter's," she said, "but I thought you might appreciate them more, just now, and she was happy to let you have them." I was wearing drab green hospital gowns most of the time; the pink and purple barrettes were a welcome reminder of the outside world, and I beamed as I slipped them into my hair.

'Thanks," I said, adding, "How old is your daughter?"

"A little older than you—about thirteen." She looked at my reflection in the small vanity mirror and smiled. "You look very pretty."

I automatically shook my head. "Not me. I'm not pretty."

"I think you are. Why don't you?"

Dr. Carroll's talent for making therapy seem like gentle conversation put me at my ease, and her calm attitude toward my starkest fears made those fears seem somehow surmountable. At first we talked only about music, and school, and all the normal self-image problems any girl my age would have; it wasn't until our fifth session together that she asked me if I saw any other Katherines in the room just then.

I glanced over at the window, where the Screamer, as I called her, was pounding on the thick leaded glass, shouting "Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!" over and over. I told this to Dr. Carroll (though I didn't repeat the F-word), wondering if she believed me.

She nodded, but instead of pursuing it she looked at me very seriously and said, "You're a very special young lady, Katherine. You know all about that, don't you?"

I hesitated, not admitting anything, but she went on as though I had:

"Well, sometimes special people see special things. Things other people don't see. That doesn't mean those things aren't real. It doesn't mean that you're wrong, or crazy, for seeing them."

It was the first time anyone had used the word crazy to my face, though not the first time it had occurred to me. Tears sprang to my eyes. "I'm not?" I said in a small, unbearably hopeful voice.

She shook her head. "I can't tell you these things you see will ever go away. But I can help you to live with them."

"But who are they?" I asked, desperate for answers. "Where do they come from?"

She paused. "We're not sure yet. We have some ideas, but we can't talk about them to your parents because that's all they are right now, just ideas. But…" She put a fingertip, lightly, to my lips; smiled. "Can you keep a secret, Kathy? Our secret, yours and mine. Not for your mom or dad, or your best friend, or anyone?"

I nodded eagerly.

"You're a little too young to understand it all," she said, "but think of them as…echoes. Like when you call out in the woods, and hear your own voice bounce back at you? That's all they are. And they can't hurt you."

"Are they real?"

"Not in the way you are," she said. "How can I—?" She stopped, thought a moment, then smiled. "Hold out your left hand," she instructed.

I held out my left hand. "Keep it there," she said. "Now. Look around. Do you see any other echoes?"

I looked around the room. The Screamer was still there, of course, and the sobbing girl, and…

I gasped.

Sitting next to me on the bed was another echo—a perfect echo, in fact, dressed just like me, the flowered barrettes in exactly the same places, identical in appearance, except…she was holding out her right hand.

"What do you see?" the doctor asked. I told her. When I turned back, the echo was gone.

And I began to understand, however vaguely, what the echoes truly were…

I went home about two weeks later, and though the number of echoes increased when I did, they no longer terrified me the way they had; with Dr. Carroll's help—mainly concentration techniques—I was able to reduce them to the level of background noise, like a television set accidentally left on. And I began noticing other things about them: how some echoes looked as real, as three-dimensional, as I did; how others seemed curiously flat, like watercolors painted on the air; how still others were vague, hazily defined, flickering in and out of existence as though their purchase on reality was tenuous at best. As the years passed and my vocabulary increased, my ability to describe what I saw increased with it—and I dutifully reported everything to Dr. Carroll.

I returned to school, but found that my absence had only made things worse for me there; word had gotten out that I'd checked into a hospital, and though "nervous exhaustion" may be relatively value-neutral for adults, for children it is one more way to set someone apart. My classmates—some of them—would call out to me in the hallway, "Hey, Nervous!" Or, "Hey, Nervie!" If I objected, got angry, they just made a bigger deal of it: "Hey, Nervie, take it easy! Don't wanna go back to the bughouse!" All I could do was ignore them as best I could; if I could ignore the echoes, I told myself, I could ignore anything.

But even the classmates who didn't actively torment me shied away from me, and my loneliness went from tolerable to profound. I didn't mention it to my parents on the reasonable and usually accurate assumption that parents only made things like this worse; I stuck it out until I moved on into high school, where I thought I could melt unobtrusively into a larger student body, and where—amid the normal quotient of violence, drugs, and gangs—I hoped a week in a mental hospital was hardly worth mentioning. But there were still those who remembered, still those who took delight in harassing me; my only solace was my music, and my only friend, Dr. Carroll.

Most if not all of my echoes made the transition to high school with me; but the majority, luckily, seemed to take no notice of me—they walked, talked, laughed, and moved like images on a movie screen that just happened to be the world. A few, like Robert, continued to interact with me occasionally. Sometimes they would try to do this in the middle of a class, and I had to do my best to not react, to keep my expression stony. They never seemed to appear during my piano lessons with Professor Laangan, and I finally realized why: there was only one piano in my instructor's home, and while I was sitting at it, I couldn't see any of the echoes who were doubtless occupying that same space. On occasion, however, I heard snatches of melody, other hands fingering other keys in some other reality: some not as well as I, some just as well, and some, to my great annoyance, better than I.

On rare occasions, an echo found me alone, as on one overcast day in March, as I walked home from school to find a smiling Robert pacing me, paint-box tucked under one arm.

"Hi," he said. I looked around. There was no one else on the street; it didn't much matter if I answered him or not. Perhaps it was a mark of my loneliness that I wanted to answer him.

"Hi," I said. Like me, Robert was entering puberty, but unlike me, it seemed to agree with him. I was a slow starter, short and flat where my classmates were growing taller and rounder. Robert was going through a normal growth spurt, filling out, becoming more muscular; his voice was deeper too. More and more I felt uncomfortable around him, uncomfortable with the feelings he evoked in me. But I tried to be friendly; I smiled.

"See you got that paint-box for Christmas," I said.

"Yeah, it's great. You get that sequencing program you wanted?"

It had been so long I'd almost forgotten. I nodded. We walked in silence a long moment, then he said, quietly, "I wish we could be together."

I felt suddenly anxious. "I…don't think that's possible," I said, picking up my pace just a little.

He thought a moment, then nodded sadly. "Yeah. I guess not," he said. Then he shrugged.

Something occurred to me, then. "Do you…see them?" I asked. "The others?"

He looked at me with puzzlement. " 'Others'?"

No; clearly, he didn't. "Never mind," I said. "Well. See you."

I started to veer off the path we'd been sharing—but he reached out, as though to take my hand! I'm sure he couldn't, not really, but I never found out; I flinched, pulled back my hand before he made—or didn't make—contact.

He looked hurt. "Do you have to go?"

Something in his eyes, his tone, disturbed me. Suddenly this felt wrong; unnatural.

"I—I'm sorry," I said, turning. I hurried off down the street; he didn't follow, but stood staring after me for what seemed the longest time. I kept walking, head down, and when I finally looked back, he was no longer there, as though the wind itself had taken him.

* * *

"Why can they see me, but not each other?"

By now most of my sessions with Dr. Carroll resembled physics lessons more than psychotherapy; we would sit in her office and discuss all the books she'd given me, the ones comprehensible to a teenager, and she could now give more sophisticated answers to my questions than she could a few years ago.

"Because you're the observer," she explained. "They're just…probability wave functions. You're real; they just have the potential to be real." She thought a moment, then added, "Actually, some of them can see each other—the ones in your hospital room, the ones who 'split off' from you fairly recently."

"Robert seems awfully real for someone who isn't."

She got up, poured herself a cup of coffee. "Well, some of the echoes had more potential to be real than others. Obviously, at some point your parents seriously considered having a boy, as well as genetically enhancing his artistic skills. The more chance that that 'you' might actually have been born, the more real their echo seems to you."

I shook my head. "I've read all this stuff," I said, "and it seems to me like everybody should have these echoes."

"We probably do," she allowed. "For all we know everyone on Earth may be a nexus of an infinite number of probability lines, with the more likely waves creating artifacts—echoes. More today, maybe, than ever before, with the advent of genetic engineering. Thirty years ago, there were only a limited number of combinations possible from a normal conception; now there are billions."

"So why can I see mine, but you can't see yours?"

She sat down at her desk again and sighed.

"Sometimes," she said with a smile, "I think we have as many theories as you have echoes. Kohler draws an interesting analogy. Zygotes grow by cellular proliferation—one cell becoming two, two becoming four—and differentiation, that is, some cells become muscle, some nerve, et cetera. Probability waves, the theory goes, proliferate in much the same way—one wave splitting in two, the second differentiating from the first on a quantum level, creating various quantum 'ghosts.' Perhaps you remember the quantum split in the same way the body remembers things on a cellular level. Perhaps the process of enhancement creates some structural change in the brain that enables you to see the echoes."

"In other words," I said, "you don't know."

She shrugged. "We know more than we did when you first came here, but that's only been a few years. Chances are it will be another generation before we have enough—forgive me—enough autopsies to collect a decent amount of data."

I envisioned my body lying inert on a laboratory table, my skull split open like a coconut, scientists studying the ridges of my brain like tea readers. The image stayed with me for days. Sometimes the worst part of my "ability" was that it reminded me too clearly, too consistently, of my origins. My musical talent was all I had, I clung to it desperately, but at times I had to wonder how special, how real, was a talent that had been so carefully graphed, mapped, plotted. I tried not to dwell on it, but it was hard not to; hard to fight off the depressions which took periodic hold of me. And they often came at the worst times.

In March of my senior year my parents, Professor Laangan, and I took the train to New York City, where I auditioned for the Juilliard School. My audition pieces, I had decided, would be Chopin's Etude in E major, a prelude and fugue from Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier, Elliott Carter's Piano Sonata, and my longtime favorite, Alessandro Marcello's Concerto in D minor. The Marcello, originally written for oboe and orchestra, I would play in a reduction for piano, but I needed someone to perform the orchestral part of the score (Juilliard had only recently allowed the use of concerti at auditions, but still didn't permit computerized accompaniment), and Professor Laangan had graciously agreed to do so at a second piano. As the train hurtled closer to New York I felt thrilled, energized, terrified—all normal things to be feeling, to be sure. But as I walked into the classroom and faced the panel of three Juilliard instructors, my insecurities surged up inside me. I imagined that they were all looking at me as though they knew, as though I bore some stigmata instantly identifying me as a fraud, a genetic cheat (though I told myself that I could hardly be unique in that, here at Juilliard). At the piano I hesitated a long moment, trying to stave off my self-consciousness and fear, unable to look the faculty panel in the eye…until Professor Laangan prompted me by clearing his throat, and, unable to put it off any longer, I took a deep breath and launched into the Etude. As soon as I began playing, thank God, my fears vanished. I was no longer a gene freak, I was no longer even Kathy Brannon, I was the instrument of this music, the medium through which it came to life two centuries after it was written, and that was enough.

After Chopin came Bach, and after Bach, the complex counterpoint of Carter's Sonata; and then Professor Laangan took his place at a second piano, and together we began the concerto. I had played the others well enough, I knew, but this piece was different; this I felt deeply, and as I played, I understood for the first time why it held such special attraction for me. As I played the first movement, the Andante with its sweep and eloquence, its sometimes breathless pace, it seemed to represent all the promise and impatience of youth—my promise, the promise that my parents had instilled in me. I segued into the second movement, that sense of bright expectation replaced by the slow, haunting strains of the Adagio, at once lyrical and sad—mirroring the turns my own life had taken, the shifting harmonies sounding to me like the raised voices of ghosts, of echoes. And finally the third movement, the Presto, returning to the faster pace of the first—lighter of heart, a structure to it that seemed to promise a calmer, more ordered existence. No wonder I loved it; I was living it.

When I finished the instructors smiled and thanked me, impossible to read their expressions, but I didn't care—I knew I had done well, that I had exhibited both technique and feeling, and, more importantly, that I had done the best I was capable of. My parents, the professor, and I celebrated with an early dinner at Tavern on the Green, then took the 7:00 train back to Washington; and as the train cleaved the darkness around us, I felt as happy, as secure, as I had ever felt.

The feeling, of course, did not last long. I returned to school the next day, where I was judged—where I judged myself—on a different standard. Ever the outsider, I would walk alone from class to class, but all around me—in the halls, on the grounds, in the cafeteria—my echoes walked and talked and laughed with unseen others: friends I could not see, friends I would never know. Blonde Kathi was now a cheerleader, always laughing, always surrounded (I imagined) by hordes of well-wishers; I watched her flirt with unseen admirers and I wondered how she found the courage, I longed to do the same. Another echo, a flautist, walked by in her band uniform, nodding and talking to other (invisible) band members, and I coveted that uniform, the solidarity it represented; there was no place for a pianist in a high school band, and no time for me to learn another instrument. Even bratty, bitchy Katja seemed to have friends, God knew how; what was so wrong with me?

At night, as I lay in bed, it became harder and harder to ignore the echoes swarming in the darkness. The red-haired Kathy with perfect, genetically sculptured features undressed by my wardrobe closet, casting no reflection in the mirrored door, but I saw every perfect curve of her body outlined in the moonlight: full breasts where mine had barely budded, baby fat long gone, wavy hair cascading down her back. I looked away. The gymnast, tall and lithe, was doing yoga at the foot of my bed; she moved with grace and assurance, with a serene confidence in her body and herself that I lacked, that I envied. Glancing away, I caught a flickering glimpse of a male echo—not Robert or the mathematician but another boy, a football player I think—taking off his clothes. His image was vague and tenuous—a more remote potential for existence, I suppose—but I could still make out his wide shoulders, his muscled torso, thick penis hanging like a rope between his legs, and in a way I envied him too, his apparent strength, his male power. Sometimes it felt as though I lacked any power over my life, and he—and the gymnast, and the redhead—seemed to have so much strength, so much confidence. It wasn't fair. Any of them could have been me, I could have been them, it wasn't fair.

Dr. Carroll tried to convince me that I couldn't, shouldn't compare myself to the echoes; you can't hold yourself up, she said, to every infinite possibility, every unrealized ambition. I knew she was right, but I was feeling particularly insecure; it had been weeks since my audition in New York, and still no word from Juilliard. I told her I was afraid I might not get in, she assured me I would…and then, after a moment's hesitation, she added, "And even if you don't, there are other ways you can use your gifts."

I nodded; sighed. "I know. There are plenty of colleges with fine music departments around, but Juilliard—"

"I didn't mean your music," she said. "I meant your other gift."

I blinked, not understanding at first; I hardly thought of it as a gift. "What do you mean?" I asked, a bit warily.

She shrugged. "You have a unique skill, Kathy. You see possibilities. I know for a fact that there are others, with the same ability, who've put that talent to work."

I had no idea what she was talking about.

"In research," she explained. "Think about it. In medical research, for instance, certain decisions are made in the course of an experiment; combinations of chemicals, of drugs, chains of combinations. Sometimes you work months, years, only to find out it's a dead end.

"But someone like you—simply by becoming part of the experiment—can change all that. You make one decision, one we may even know the outcome of in advance—and a whole spectrum of potential outcomes is created, echoes, some of which you may be able to communicate with. You could save weeks or months or years of precious work time, hasten the invention of cures, speed up the pace of science a hundredfold. People's lives might be saved who would otherwise die waiting for drugs to be developed, vaccines created."

It sounded like a sales pitch. I looked at her; my face must have been ashen. I thought of the flowered barrettes she had given me, and knew I would never be able to look at them again in the same way.

I stood up, feeling lost, feeling sick. "I have to go."

Realizing she'd overplayed her hand, Dr. Carroll stood as well. "Kathy—"

"I have to go." And I fairly well ran to the door, not listening to her frantic calls, and I never went back.

That night, the sobbing echo appeared again, crying herself to sleep in a corner of my bed; I lay in the dark, ear plugs a poor insulation from her cries, wanting desperately to take up her lament, to join her in her sad chorus, knowing I could not; I must not. As terrible as that night was, I told myself that the Adagio had to end sometime…didn't it?

* * *

Word came two weeks later: I was accepted to Juilliard. I was ecstatic at the thought. Not just the opportunity to study at the world's most renowned college for the performing arts, but the chance to start fresh in a new city, a new school, where no one knew me and no one would ever call me "Nervie" again. Mother and Father went to New York with me to find me a place to live, no dorm rooms being available in Rose Hall; they were sad to see me leave Virginia, but jubilant that I had (they believed) overcome my "problems" and was "fulfilling my potential"—and their expectations.

After a week of apartment-hunting we finally found a small, unremarkable one-bedroom on West 117th Street, near Columbia University. Once, it had probably been a nice enough neighborhood; now it was somewhere between a funky off-campus environment and a war zone, with gangs, drugs, and streetwalkers a stone's throw from my building. My parents were quietly horrified, but as I stood there in the empty flat with its bare floors and scabrous walls, I felt almost delirious with joy: because the flat truly was empty, empty of echoes, of ghosts: for the first time in five years, I was alone. Over my parents' reservations I signed a one-year lease, went back to Virginia to pack and ship my belongings, and by summer's end was living in New York, truly "on my own" in a way my family could never comprehend. By moving here, I'd diverged from the paths the echoes were taking; this apartment, this life, was mine, and I had to share it with no one else. Oh, to be sure, once or twice I caught a glimpse of some small echo, a left turn instead of a right, a blue dress instead of a white one—but they disappeared quickly, like ripples on water; the worst of them, the Kathis and Katjas and Roberts, I had left well behind me. I rented a small piano, kept it in a place of honor in the living room, and began my new life.

In addition to classes in piano, I took courses in sight-singing and music theory (first semester, harmony; second, counterpoint), and it was in the latter class that I made my first real friend. His name was Gerald: warm eyes, a slightly sardonic smile, blond hair already receding a bit above a high forehead. A violinist, in his second year at Juilliard, I gathered he had already made something of a splash here; we got to talking, he invited me out for coffee after class.

It was evident, just in the way his eyes tracked men more than women as we walked across campus to a coffee shop on 65th Street, that Gerald was gay, and to be honest I was relieved; I had no experience at dating, and the concept was both exciting and daunting. Over coffee, Gerald said he'd like to hear me play, so we found an empty practice room in Rose Hall and I played the Chopin etude I had performed at my audition.

He seemed impressed. "How long have you been playing?" he asked.

"Since I was four."

He raised an eyebrow. "And I thought I was a prodigy. My parents started me on a half-size violin when I was five." He smiled, then said, "Why don't we try something together?"

We did—that day and every day for the next week. I was the stodgy traditionalist, Gerald the pop culture maven; in addition to classical pieces we collaborated on Gershwin, Copland, and a lovely violin concerto by the 20th century motion picture composer Miklos Rozsa. Gerald sight-read as quickly as I did, and for a while we tried to one-up each other with increasingly difficult pieces on a cold reading. Gerald didn't bat an eye—which started me wondering about him. I watched him more and more closely as he played—noticing that every once in a while he seemed…distracted; his head turning ever so slightly, as though hearing something just beyond his sight. It took me weeks to work up the courage to say something, but finally, over coffee one evening, the cafe we sat in nearly deserted, I found the nerve:

"Gerald?" My voice was soft, and it trembled a little. "Have you…I mean, do you ever…hear. Things?"

He looked at me, bemusedly. "Do I—hear? Things?"

I flushed with embarrassment. "Never mind. Forget I said—"

Quickly, he put a hand on mine. "No. It's all right. I…think I know what you mean."

My eyes widened. "You do?"

He nodded. As it turned out, I was right: Gerald and I had more in common than we first realized. Like me, he was gene enhanced—but unlike me, he had only partial vision when it came to echoes. "It's like when you look at something bright, a red stop light," he said, "and then you look away, and you see, just for a moment, a spot of green, because green is red's complementary color? That's what it's like for me. Complements, I call them; opposites. I only see them for a moment, and then they're gone."

"Lucky you," I said.

"Actually, I do feel lucky, at times. One of the first 'complements' I ever saw was a 'me' who was—don't ask me how I could tell this; I just did—a me who was straight. Not macho, just…hetero. I saw him look at something, and somehow I knew he was looking at a woman, and I just knew.

"And I realized, all at once, how fortunate I was. Because the doctors, they've known for years which genes incline us one way or the other, they had to have known which way I'd turn out…and my parents didn't 'correct' it, as they could have; as so many parents do these days. And I just felt very fortunate, that my parents—even if they did want a violinist—loved me enough to let me, in this one way at least, be myself."

I smiled, a bit wistfully, but before I could say anything Gerald suddenly leaned in: "Listen," and I could feel him changing the subject, perhaps uncomfortable with all this, "do you know Bach's Musical Offering?"

"Of course."

"I'm performing it in recital later this semester." His eyes were bright as he said it. "Me, another violinist, a cellist, a flautist, and a pianist. How'd you like to audition for it?"

If I was disappointed that Gerald was only partly a kindred spirit, I quickly got over it; I was thrilled at the prospect, thrilled even to be asked. I agreed readily, spent the next several days being coached by Gerald; at the audition I competed with several other piano students, all of them quite gifted, but I felt no trepidation or fear: it was refreshing, exhilarating, to be competing with someone other than myself. With Gerald accompanying me on violin, I performed the sonata that was part of the Offering—and was stunned and delighted when, the next day, Gerald called to tell me I had, in his words, "gotten the gig"! "Now, of course," he said, deadpan, "we beat you senseless with practice for the next six weeks." I laughed. The only happier moment in my life was the day I was actually accepted to Juilliard.

A week later, another first: Chris, a cute dark-eyed boy in my sight-singing class, actually asked me out on a date. I was eighteen years old, ashamed to admit that I had never been on one before, trying to act casual as I said, "Sure. I'd love to." As soon as I got home I called Gerald and asked his advice. "Be yourself," he counseled, "and try not to bump into the furniture." I liked Gerald, but as a confidant he left something to be desired.

Chris took me to the campus Drama Theater, where students from the drama department were staging Edward Albee's A Delicate Balance. Chris put a hand gently on my arm as we made our way to our seats; I sat there, excited not just by his presence but by how very normal it all felt—by the prospect that perhaps, after all, I would have a normal life, filled with normal joys and only normal pains. I barely paid attention to the play, and it wasn't until almost the end of the first act—at the entrance of "Harry and Edna" the older couple so shaken with existential fear that they take refuge in their best friends' home—that I sat up and took notice.

Edna walked on stage, timid, fearful—and I gasped.

Edna was me.

Or at least one of them was. The actress portraying Edna in my world, the real world, was a short blonde; but in some other near-reality, I was playing the part. This echo was slightly taller than me, her hair somewhat lighter, and her form was translucent, shimmery, in the way I associated with the more remote echoes—separated from me by hundreds if not thousands of other potentialities.

I heard the two actresses' voices transposed on one another, even their bodies occasionally superimposed, and I fought to keep calm when I really wanted to wail with grief, to mourn the loss of my newfound individuality: I'd thought I was alone, thought I had something to call my own, and now—

Tears welled in my eyes and I turned away, terrified to let Chris see. I fell back on old concentration techniques, trying not to watch the echo on stage; luckily it was near the end of the first act, and at intermission I ducked into the ladies' room to compose myself. Hands gripping the sink, I told myself I could not, would not, cry. Steeling myself for the rest of the play, I went back inside the auditorium with Chris…but it was even worse than I thought. When the curtain rose on Act Two, it came up on the character of Julia, the daughter…and that, too, was me.

A different me; short, plump, familiar features set in a round face, chubby arms waving angrily, in character. Oh, Jesus, I thought; oh, God, no. I managed to keep my despair from showing throughout all of that first scene, but when "Edna" appeared in the middle of the next one—when I saw two echoes of myself strutting about the stage, four different voices playing as though in quadraphonic stereo—my agitation started to show. Chris couldn't help but notice; I told him I wasn't feeling well, reluctantly we left the show, and in my discomfort I must have appeared distant and unfriendly, because he took me home, bussed me on the cheek, and never called again.

As I fell asleep that night, the sobbing echo returned for the first time in months, sitting in a corner of my previously untainted apartment—and, from that point on, never left…

I should have known; should have realized that my parents' ambitions for me would be so alike in so many other potential realities. In the weeks to come a day did not go by that I did not see at least one echo: Passing a dance class I caught a glimpse of a graceful, poised Katherine (Katrina, the instructor called her) at the ballet barre, dark hair in a chic chignon, long legs pirouetting flawlessly to Swan Lake, her face almost regal in its serenity. In my sight-singing class I heard my own voice drowned out by another, familiar in some ways but with a perfect pitch and soaring beauty I could never hope for; I saw her out of the corner of my eye, a Katherine who looked much like me but one who used the instrument of her voice better than I did my own piano, and I hated her.

I tried talking to Gerald about what was happening, but sympathetic as he tried to be, his "gift" was nowhere near as developed as mine, he truly didn't understand the full horror of what I was going through, and could offer no advice to help me cope with it. He seemed uncomfortable even talking about it, and after a few attempts I backed off, not wishing to lose a friendship, however flawed.

As I crossed campus one evening, on my way home, I caught a glimpse of Chris, heading alone toward the dormitories. I looked away, hoping he wouldn't see me, then, unable to resist, looked back for one last glance—and this time, he was no longer alone. This time, the air next to him boiled and shimmered with an echo of another Katherine—the dancer, Katrina, no mistaking the long legs, the regal face—her arm looped through his, her mouth open in a laugh. Chris—being in my world, of course—paid no attention to her, and after a few moments the dancer's form rippled and vanished; but I knew that in some other potential reality, another Chris walked with her, laughed with her, and I felt an anger and a compulsion rising within me.

I fell into step behind Chris, at a safe enough distance that he didn't notice. I knew I should turn around, knew I should go home right now, but I couldn't, and as he entered Rose Hall I poked my head in just long enough to determine which room was his. First floor; room six. I circled round the back of the dorm, found the window outside his room; crouched beside a concealing shrub, watched the light snap on inside. Carefully I raised myself up, peering into the window.

Chris was sitting at his desk, a small table lamp spilling light over textbooks and notepad computer. But though he did not realize it, he was not alone in the room. Less than five feet away, on his unmade bed, I saw her: the dancer: her nude body, toned and trim, lying on the sheets, her arms wrapped around something, someone, I could not see, her pelvis jerking back and forth, taking in that someone. She moaned; she cried out his name. Chris, she said, oh, Chris…It was almost comical; it was crushing, horrible. I felt as though I'd been physically struck; I stumbled backwards, gravel crunching noisily underfoot, away from Katrina, but her sighs and the sound of Chris's name seemed to follow me all the way home…

That night, the sobbing echo in my apartment slowly stopped crying, falling into a silence I found even more disturbing; she sat in a corner, half-dressed, hair unwashed, staring into space. I tried not to meet her eyes—the irises a flat blue, dimmed by some cataract of spirit—their dead light constantly threatening to pull me in, pull me down…

Desperate to perform well at the Bach recital, I practiced as best I could, trying to ignore the echoes of better, more talented Katherines all around me. When the night arrived, I felt a twinge of an old excitement as I walked onto the stage at Alice Tully Hall wearing a simple but elegant white gown, joining an ensemble that included Gerald, another violinist, a flautist, a cellist, and myself.

The Musical Offering is a suite of tense, somber beauty, the first ricercare scored in this instance for piano; I played well, I thought, due in no small part to my affinity for the mood of the piece: a lament of sorts, perfectly in keeping with my own mood. We moved from the first ricercare to the canons which followed, my piano playing at times with one or more of the strings, strings and flute together, or not at all (as in the fourth canon, a duet between Gerald and the other violinist). It was during one such moment, as I ''sat out" and listened to the other instruments, that I began to hear—faintly but distinctly—the sound of another piano. A piano taking the same part the cello was now playing; an echo from a reality in which this piece was arranged differently. The pianist, damn her, was brilliant, the technique letter-perfect. Her vigor and conviction so rattled me that I almost missed my entrance into the next ricercare, probably the most demanding part of the suite for me: I was not only performing it solo, I was playing six melodic lines all at the same time. Difficult under the best of circumstances—but now I heard the echo of that other piano, my piano, also performing the ricercare, but ever so slightly time-displaced (my other self having begun the piece moments before I had). The dissonance nearly drove me to distraction; for the next six and a half minutes I struggled to keep my concentration, I felt my gown growing embarrassingly wet with perspiration, and when I finally finished the ricercare I felt not triumph but mere relief—and then disgust, convinced that my performance had suffered for it. I got a bit of a breather in the next three canons, but when we came to the sonata I once more found myself playing, in some strange quantum duet, the same part as my echo—and once again, not playing it as well, the echo's rendering more controlled, the lamentation somehow deeper, truer, than mine. This was perhaps the bitterest pill of all to swallow: though I knew my share of torment, even at that there was someone better.

By the end of the recital I was drained, exhausted beyond anything I had ever known; and though everyone congratulated me on a fine performance, I took no joy in it, and fled home to my apartment, fighting the temptation to cry with sleep.

The next day I did not go to sight-singing class, for fear of hearing the Katherine with perfect pitch and soaring voice. I stayed at home and cranked up my stereo, Mathis der Maler again, in a desperate attempt to drown out the faintest whisper of any echoes.

The day after that I didn't go to piano class, terrified I might hear the same Katherine who had outclassed me in the recital. I stayed at home and left the television on all day, trying to fill the apartment with more acceptable ghosts, electronic ghosts, phosphor ghosts.

Gerald called, concerned at my absence from school. I told him that my mother was ill, that I was leaving that afternoon for Virginia, that I might be away for a while. He extended his sympathies and I took them. When he hung up, I switched on my answering machine and never turned it off. My parents left occasional messages and I answered them, keeping the conversations brief, pretending to a hectic schedule I didn't have, rushing off when I could no longer keep up the crushing pretense of normality.

I left the apartment less and less, leaving only to buy groceries and pay the rent. I spent more and more of each day in bed, but, asleep, I seemed not to dream myself but to share the dreams of others: vivid, highly visual dreams filled with color and form, Robert's dreams; pleasant, happy dreams, the inner life of the gorgeous, red-headed Kathy, prosaic but peaceful; jarring, violent dreams of conflict and competition, Katja's dreams; dreams of movement and physicality, the gymnast's dreams. At first I found them disturbing; slowly they became a kind of narcotic, as I realized that through them I could, however briefly and incompletely, become my echoes. The redhead's confidence, the gymnast's grace, the ordered geometry of the math major's mind. One moment I'm the football player, reliving the glories of a touchdown, a thirty-yard pass, beer after the game, fast sweaty sex with my girlfriend, my penis swelling inside her; the next moment I'm the singer, hearing/feeling the resonance in my voice, shaping the sound, diaphragm relaxed, the peculiar but satisfying sensation of being my own instrument; a moment later my body is still my instrument but this time I manipulate it not just with voice but with posture, expression, movement, an actress's devices.

I drift from dream to dream, mind to mind, the casual clutter of the actress's thoughts, the laser-sharp focus of Katja's, the passion and discipline of Katrina's, all a welcome respite from me, from being me, and more and more I'm not me, I'm them; I'm only me when I have to be, when my body demands it. Asleep, I feel a pressure in my bladder and reluctantly I wake, dragging myself to the bathroom, relieving myself, sometimes getting something to eat, sometimes not, then returning to bed. This goes on for days; weeks. And then one day, amidst dreams of being smarter, prettier, happier, more talented, I feel my body call and grudgingly answer, padding to the bathroom, doing what's necessary, glancing into the vanity mirror on my way back to bed—

And I stopped, suddenly shaken by what I saw.

The Katherine in the mirror was half-dressed, her hair unruly and unwashed, with a dead light in her flat blue eyes that threatened to pull me in; pull me down. It was the echo who'd first appeared in the hospital, so many years before; who'd lain in a corner of my bed in Virginia and cried her lament of long years; who joined me here, in New York, and whose sobs slowly gave way to silence and gray despair, in her eyes an ancestral memory of my grandfather.

But the echo wasn't sitting in the corner. The echo was in my mirror.

I felt a surge of panic, the first emotion in weeks I hadn't dreamed, hadn't borrowed. I looked desperately around the apartment, hoping I was wrong—hoping to catch a glimpse of the echo, somewhere else in the apartment—but the echo wasn't there.

Of course she wasn't. I'd become the echo.

Once, we had been separated by countless other probability lines; other paths, the ones closest to me diverging only slightly, the ones closest to her diverging more. Slowly, subtly, I had traveled from one path to the next, like fingers moving absently from key to key on my piano, drawing closer and closer to her probability line…until it became mine. I had made the transition so slowly, so gradually, that I hadn't even realized it was happening.

At first I couldn't accept it. It wasn't true; this couldn't be happening! I raced out of the bedroom into the living room, still hoping, praying, that I might see my echo, that I wasn't her—

I didn't see her in the living room, of course. But I saw someone else.

I saw a Katherine who looked very much as I had, once: short dark hair, well-groomed, neatly dressed…with bright, clear, sky-blue eyes, undimmed by time or pain. She was sitting at the piano, playing the Largo movement from the Musical Offering, and for a moment I thought she might have been the echo I'd heard on stage at the recital; but as I got close enough to see her fingers on the keys, close enough to recognize my own style, I knew that she was not.

I looked into her face, and was shocked by what I saw; what I thought I saw.

Contentment? Peace? It had been so long since I had known anything like either, I wasn't sure I recognized them. I tried to think when I had last felt such contentment, and I thought of the day I had moved in here, the joy I'd felt, the promise of a brighter, happier life.

My heart sank. This Kathy, this echo in front of me—she had lived that happier life. The life that should have been mine. The probability line I should have traveled—but I veered from it, taking a darker path.

My legs gave way beneath me, I dropped to the floor, and I cried. For how long, how many minutes or hours, I can't tell you now. But toward the end of it, as I gave up the grief I'd held for too long, I began to understand something. Something I should have realized years before:

Some of my echoes were the result of chance; but others were a product of choice. I didn't choose to be a musical prodigy—that was determined for me. But I had chosen to become what I was now: the sobbing echo. However unwittingly, I had chosen that. I had had that choice.

And if I had it then—I still did.

I still had a choice.

I did. I did.

* * *

There is an old, famous experiment—one of the first to imply the existence of probability waves—which I read about in my sessions with Dr. Carroll: Shoot a spray of electrons through two slits in a wall, onto a video screen where their impact can be recorded. The result? An interference pattern from the overlapping waves of electrons. Fine; that much makes sense. But shoot just one electron at a time through a slit, then look later at the cumulative pattern—and you find the identical interference pattern. Impossible, on the face of it: the electrons, having been projected one at a time, haven't actually overlapped. But apparently the thousands of potential electron paths exist, on a quantum level, with the one path the electron actually does travel—and they somehow influence it, limiting the paths the single electron can take.

It took me a long while to realize it, but in a way, I was like that electron: for too long, I allowed the thousands of potential lives I might have led to limit, to proscribe, the life I was leading. Seeing the echoes of all I might have been, it was easy to forget that I was not just one of them; that they in fact emanated from me, not simply from that one moment of genetic manipulation but from every moment thereafter as well. Human beings, unlike electrons, have free will—and I soon decided to exert it with a vengeance.

I dropped out of Juilliard and enrolled at a small college in upstate New York, leaving the majority of my quantum ghosts behind in Manhattan. My parents were appalled at the move; even more so when I elected not to major in music, but to keep an open major, at least for a year or two. I took classes in art, in literature, in anthropology, any and all subjects that interested me—and was amazed to discover that I had both an affinity and an aptitude for something outside music. I would never have Robert's artistic skills, but I could, in fact, draw passably well, if only for my own amusement; I might never have the dancer's grace at a ballet barre, but I could dance, I was not a hopeless klutz. I might never have the red-haired Kathy's drop-dead, fashion-model looks—but I was pretty. I really was.

Because I had been designed from birth to be a musician, I had decided, like the electron, that there was only one path for me to take; and having discovered that that was not the case, I've had a richer, more interesting life than I might otherwise have dreamed. I've climbed mountains in Nepal; I've ridden Irish thoroughbreds in County Monaghan. I've been married, had two children; I've written a sonata for violin and piano for my old friend Gerald, and illustrated a computer-generated children's book for my four-year-old daughter. In my youth, I naively believed that life could be, should be, structured like a concerto; today I know better. I know that life is andante and presto and adagio, all entwined, a fugue of sorts, the promise and the sadness often separated by mere moments, tragedy and serenity not nearly so discrete as I once believed. And I've known my share of both.

Through all of it, my echoes have never been far away: they are not far from me now. Now old like me, they surround me as I write this—one of them also sitting at a computer, not writing but painting; one of them playing a snatch of Gershwin on a flute; another at the piano; still another simply sitting and weeping, over what I am not quite sure. Occasionally, in big cities, I catch glimpses of others: I saw Robert on a street in Dallas and I think he recognized me, throwing me a Cheshire smile before vanishing; I went to the ballet in New York and was surprised to find Katrina performing a ghostly turn as Aurora in The Sleeping Beauty, and I felt a surge not of envy but of pride. My echoes are no longer tormentors but friends, and when one of them dies (as, inevitably, they have begun to) I mourn a little, as I would a sister. Each one, to be sure, still represents a different path, a different life. But the joy, the wonder, of it all is this: I have taken one path, but many turns; I was granted one life, but lived many lives. The paths, the roads, may be infinite and beautiful; but the journey is even more so.

MNQ/2009.09.07

12,400 Words

From The Year's Best Science Fiction, Fifteenth Annual Collection

Gardner Dozois, Editor